Critical Axis

We are in fact deciding what is important, what is real, and what matters, all the time, even though we are a long way from knowing the outcome of some of our decisions. Whether what we have done to our planet and the environment will in the long run assist or undermine our own survival, for example, is still a question unanswered. What is certain, however, is that if we are not consciously aware of worlds we create, and at least attempt to strategize where our intelligence may lead us, we may face more difficulties in our survival. It seems, in an intelligent universe, the only way we can survive is by becoming more consciously aware and choosing the eternal rather than the expedient, either in society or in our own personal lives. In the midst of an overwhelmingly complex universe, on a planet on a voyage itself around a star, we are adamantly searching for identity and purpose for our individual lives, because we, as human beings, not only struggle to procure the means of our own survival, we also need sets of reasons that make our lives worth living. We are a very complex species. And this complexity is twice complicated by the fact that we are always changing, like it or not. We don’t stay at one age or one level in development. The arrow of time moves only in one direction. We are like voyagers on a vast beach, walking backwards, only seeing where we have been with no idea of what lies before us—except to guess that that which is to come may bare traces of where we have been—only discovering differently in hindsight. After vast miles of walking backwards over plains it may be that our next step will bring us over the Grand Canyon. It might be improbable, but then again it may be. Amidst this mysterious context, we tell stories in order to see ourselves in time, to give purpose to our lives, make sense of the mystery around us, and to find, if possible at all, meaning in our existence. The fact that we must find meaning is an extension of our mortality, and it is what makes us different from the gods we imagine in our own mythologies. Immortal gods, who do not know of death, literally, must be bored with no parameters that define their existence. It is because we are temporary, because we live in time that is finite and is, in fact, rather brief, that we must find meaning to make our lives make sense. In that quest, we are, however, superior to the gods because all of the phenomena that surrounds us, from the mystery of the cosmos to the rituals of life, take on meaning and significance because we are only here briefly—witnessing, and attempting to know and even imagine the world. We are entities capable of creativity, beauty, courage, and amazing abstraction, as well as entities capable of almost unimaginable self-destruction, both individually and collectively. Which side of our nature will define us turns on the edge of the axis. Like a coin spinning in the air, not knowing whether it will land on heads or tails, and in our search for ourselves in time, we seem almost the beggar and the thieves of our own lives. We are all mystical travelers whose destiny may turn on the edge of a dime.