Ideas, Insights,& Intuitions

Recently I celebrated my 69^th birthday. My daughter and her (now our) friends took me out to a fancy restaurant, had the waiters do their birthday act, and brought presents for me to open at the table. It was the most special birthday I have had since I was 16 and my father danced with me!

But I have to admit that there is a little psychological trick that the mind does with those decade markers. To be 69 definitely feels much younger than to be [OMG!] 70! When I am 70 I will be OLD–until I have been 70 for a while, and then I will think that 80 is old. It is the same trick that some adman dreamed up to make prices that are just 1¢ less than a whole dollar seem a LOT less expensive.

Does anyone remember when things were still priced in numbers that matched our most-used currency? Things did not cost 49¢, 99¢, $1.99, or (that horror) $99.99. They were 50¢, $1, $2, or $100, and that seemed a lot more honest. Storekeepers didn’t have to keep a drawer full of pennies for change, and it made the arithmetic much simpler.

While I am at it, when did the 0.9 creep into the price of gasoline? And on most service station signs, this little 9 is so small that you can barely see it. That is intentional, I am sure. Our brains do not move up to the next whole cent. We believe we are paying $2.69 per gallon, and not $2.70 minus 1/10 of a cent.

Well, it never bothered me so much to be turning 30 or 40 or even 50 that I would claim to be 29, 39, or 49 for as many years as I could get away with. I knew that I looked too young to be my real age, and I enjoyed having people tell me so when I told the truth about my age. (Good skin and a pleasant smile, there.) I still don’t feel almost 70 unless I overdo the exercise, and then I can hardly move for 3 days. When I dream, I always seem to be about 40, for some reason. That’s how old I feel inside, I think. It’s a good, comfortable age, 40: wise enough, yet not set in my ways (though I had to turn 50 before I was able to risk everything to change a situation that I felt trapped in.)

Happy Birthday to me! I am happy to be here, healthy and mentally fit, with some limitations. I don’t know what is ahead or how many more years are left, but I believe I will be as blessed as I have been up to now with good parents (both gone now), good friends, God’s grace, and a loving family. What more do I need?

Scientists are generally occupied with questions of how phenomena occur, while philosophers want to know why. But whether he is a scholar learned in logic or a simple native whose school was a lifetime of experience, every human being goes to his grave wondering, “Why?”

First he blames his experience of the world on unseen, but all-powerful gods. Then as he learns the “how” of many of the things that occur, he attributes less and less of his experience to supernatural beings and learns to work with natural laws. Yet the question “why?” remains. It separates us from all other conscious forms of life. Animals want to know, “What is that? Where is it? How do I get it?” They may even wonder, “When? What happened? How long?” But an animal will not wonder why. Whatever its condition, it simply is.

Humankind wants to know why s/he is here, why s/he is perhaps ugly, awkward, disabled, a slow learner, poor, sick, or prone to misfortune. If s/he gets cancer, the first question is, “Why?” If his/her home is destroyed by a storm, s/he asks, “Why?” If s/he fails to win or achieve what s/he desires, s/he asks, “Why can’t I do/have it?”

This question is the source of most of our pain and suffering. It implies that there is a reason for our being here and for what happens to us, but it is a huge secret that we are never supposed to know as long as we live. Now, in hindsight, we can often see that if some misfortune had not occurred, we could not have moved on to the better position that we are in. We can see that if we had not needed help, we would not have met a person who became a lifelong friend. And if we had not failed at our first career attempt, we would never have discovered how to make use of our real talents. But this still has more to do with “how” than “why.”

The way to finding peace is to understand that there is no answer to the question, because there was no reason, no script that we were “meant” to follow. No Almighty Creator “put” us here for a purpose known to him only; we are not “supposed” to be here in order to do some pre-ordained thing. The universe and all that is in it is the visible expression of Pure Being, the First Cause, or God. And humankind, being capable of reason and abstract thought, is the highest expression that we know of so far. It is we who must create purpose within our lives because as human beings we need meaning, order, and significance to be happy. As gods in potential, we create our own world, flawed as it is by our lack of understanding. As expressions of God, we will never cease to be, but only be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

No need to look outside ourselves, asking, “Why?” The answer is within us, waiting to be expressed.