A Day Inside My World

So everything is not exactly as I would prefer it to be in my life. Oh well! But things are simpler and more manageable. Anymore, it is less about the quantity of life and more and more about the quality of life. These realities served as the backdrop for this day.

Random reflection one:

Next year I will be 65 years old, whatever that is supposed to mean or signify. As I approach this milestone of my journey, I have at least come to terms with certain realities. I probably will never accumulate a fortune in money or material things. I probably won't ever build some impressive empire in business or in any other arena. My persona will fall on the rather modest size. That is okay too because the height that my reputation will rise won't be noticeably high, so I would have a shorter distance to fall when my empire disintegrates.

But I have and will continue to live an interesting life. Life has given more good things than painful or disappointing things. And I don't suffer from the sense that I am alone in the universe. All in all, a situation with which I can live.

Random reflection two:

What if much of what we thought was true about our cultural roots proved to be incomplete or just plain wrong? What if newly acquired knowledge threatened to undermine the very foundations of what we know about the story of our species? How are we supposed to grapple with the fact that some of our most precious beliefs were borrowed from peoples whom we were taught to see as uncivilized or barbaric?

Read the book, 1491. It recreates the world of the Americas, North and South, before the Europeans landed on these shores. The historical narrative of North and South America before 1492 has been rewritten as archeologists and scientists from numerous other disciplines have made discoveries that are causing human history to be rewritten. The Inkas, the Mayans and all the other Indian nations that inhabited these two continents have been shown to have been as civilized and sophisticated as any European or Asian nation that was contemporary with them from earliest recorded history. Ironically, the "New" world contributed far more to the "Old" world of Europe than the other way around. We will never know how much knowledge and science was lost after disease killed over 95% of the peoples who populated the Americas.

I came away from reading this book with the sense of how little I really understand about what I observe in the world about me. How few facts I actually have at my disposal and how what seems to be perfectly reasonable assumption is at some level wrong, because it is based on answers to the wrong questions or on the wrong interpretation of data. I am humbled by how little I really know about anything. I have the sense that I am just a bit player on a enormous stage and the truth that there is to know is a constantly moving target. So much for hubrus as a working strategy in life.

Random thought three:

I don't always have access to a car any more. So I have to take the bus to and from work. The very rhythm of my life has changed. I find the pace of my life has slowed down. I cannot just get up and go somewhere. There is time waiting for the bus to come. Getting from here to there is no longer a straight shot, but indirect and circuitous. It is life in the slower lane and life in which one is more critically dependent on others to successfully get through each day. It is life restructured and revised. It is what it is... not necessarily worse than life with a car, just different.