Today, the Fourth of July, marks the birth of the most unusual country that has ever existed. Never in the history of the Earth has there been a country so free, so successful and so generous as the United States. I’m proud to be a citizen of this country.

There are certain givens involved with aging… declining physical condition (very subtle in my case) is one, but there is also a mystery. Although the body is changing the “me” within the body is not. “I” feel and perceive in the same way that I did twenty, thirty and more years ago. I believe I know things that I didn’t then but the “me” within has not changed. This is so true that it is one of the biggest indicators to me that we are more than our bodies.

Passive acceptance of [a] teacher’s wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.

Bertrand Russell

I came across an interesting little discussion of Einstein’s religious beliefs. It drew a lot of comments, mostly heated, with one side holding him up as a standard of proof of God and the other as a standard of proof that God doesn’t exist. With my usual sideways approach to such discussions, it occurred to me that the real lesson from that discussion was not whether or not God exists but rather why it is that we need to turn to others whether they be physicists, priests or prophets, to tell us what to believe or to justify our beliefs. Why can we not decide such things for ourselves and why are we so determined to convince others of the correctness of our views and the fallacy of theirs?

I sometimes wonder if we ever really know another person or if we overlay that person with an expectation that is strictly ours. An extreme example of this would be the neighbor that the police arrest one day and charge with the murder of 15 people over a period of five years. Inevitably the people in the neighborhood describe him as “that nice Mr. Jones. So polite and friendly. I just can’t believe it. A quiet man but a good neighbor.”

At the other end of the spectrum, take a look at your spouse, if you’re married, or another important person in your life. Can you honestly say you have never been bewildered by their reaction to a chance remark? Could it be that you only know the person you want them to be and that your perception of them is mostly an overlay of that person?

I suspect that this is the case with all our relationships. We only see what we have a need to see.

People do strange things and, for the most part, simply accept them as “what we do”. Take clapping as an example. Why in the world do we bang our hands together as a sign of approval? Bizarre.

If you reflect for a moment you will realize that nothing is permanent…not me, not you, not the Earth we live on, no human relationship. Cars wear out, houses fall down, nations and cultures disappear. Indeed one day even the Sun which energizes all life on Earth will be no more and in its’ passing it will take the Earth with it.

This is neither a bad thing nor a good thing. It’s just the way that things are.

Who knows what will arise from our passing? Could you predict an apple tree from the death of an apple seed? Look at the seed and see the fruit inside? Note the faces of the people who will benefit from the death of the seed when it becomes a tree?

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

- Jonathan Swift

I saw a bumper sticker recently that read “He who dies with the most toys wins” and it reminded me of the experience of cleaning out my parent’s house after they both died.

My father was a tinkerer and had built a nice wooden work bench in the basement where he had numerous hand tools, all neatly displayed and organized. Most were related to his hobby of rock hounding and jewelery making. They were an important part of his life and packing up the ones that neither my brother nor I wanted was a surrealistic experience. One day they were important and valuable and the next day…they were just stuff.

The very things that we find so important and necessary in our lives suddenly lose their meaning when the owner dies. It isn’t the object, the toy, that has value. It’s the experience of using it that has value.

…and yet I believe that time itself doesn’t exist. It is the parade of events that we use to mark our place in the great play in which we participate.

How can it be that time doesn’t exist? Clearly we see the hands on the clock move around and the leaves of the calendar turn. Surely that is the passage of a linear something that we call time? But no. Think of a movie film reel wound into its’ can. The whole story exists at once tucked into the can. The illusion of a linear something is produced one frame at a time but all frames exist at once. It is only our viewpoint that changes. We who are embedded in the strip cannot see it from the outside and so have no realization of the whole. Nor can we rewind. Once a frame is gone it is gone forever to us and we can never return to it again.

The moving hand writes

And, having writ, moves on.

Not all thy piety nor all thy wit can lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all the tears wash out a word of it.

(From the Rubiyat of Omar Kayam)