Some Thoughts on Life; 5/25/18

I was thinking recently about how I would like to do some purposeful writing, mostly for the sake of my eight month old son. Right now, I am a 34 year old man, and I now have this small boy who is growing and learning way faster than I can keep up with. He is something else; I'm sure all parents feel the same way about their children, but this little boy is so smart, and has so much energy, and watching him progress while I am at the end of a plateau looking towards regression makes me want to record some thoughts that I have for him to be able to read much later in his life, because actually speaking on certain subjects can be very difficult; finding the right words in the moment is hard, and I would like to be able to give him a collection of thoughts on life and this world that I held at this point in my life. * * * * * This whole idea began as my little Peter and I were driving home one night, and we were listening to a report on NPR called The Hard Problem of Consciousness. The speaker, David Chalmers, was explaining a lot about consciousness that I have studied and agree with whole heartedly; the idea that consciousness itself is one of the greatest mysteries in the universe, and that its nature and origins will be a subject of debate as timelessly as the chicken and egg conundrum. He talked about the mind, and its function as basically a device that records and judges all that you experience, organizing these judgements and feelings meticulously into a database of your memories, and then uses that database to mold the conception of your present and future experiences with these stored memories as the foundation for how you will interpret your life. Kind of heavy philosophical stuff; humans have been both blessed and cursed with this thinking mind, which is a very interesting and curious thing, as no other species on this planet has the capability of really interpreting the past, present and future, and how these accumulated events constructed through time affect an individual. Animals are purely instinctual creatures; for a human to experience the mindset of an animal, the practice of meditation will guide you towards the moment by moment purity where absolute contentment resides. * * * This is tricky stuff; I am trying to summarize a lot of things to reach yet another point; maybe I am missing the part where the point may be buried in the process. Thats a though worth revisiting. Let me try to cut to the chase: a major point I want to get across is the nature of our reality, as far as I am concerned. As humans, with our insatiably curious nature, we have made incredible strides to understand the world around us: the big world, of Earth and all its materials, and what we can learn and create from what has been provided to us; the small world, studying our own bodies and what makes our physical forms function, as well as understanding the diseases that afflict us and how to cure them; and the outside world, of our Earthly skies and outer space, where we have yet to progress enough to do more than probe into and study intently. As far as I am concerned, with the knowledge we have been able to accumulate so far in our existence, the internal studies have provided the most insight into our universe for me. We found that, working inside ourselves seems to be complete universes of cells, atoms, molecules, etc., simple small things that, functioning as a whole, make up the components of an individual human being, as well as making up all other earthly things we have collectively studied. We understand their importance, but to flip that thought, if a single blood cell were to possess the curiosity to try and understand the human being named Peter that it served, the ability for it to comprehend Peters complexity would be lost upon it in the scope of its incomprehensible subject. To me, we are another small cog in a much larger system that we simply can not comprehend. We are the blood cells that are functioning simply to try to keep Earth alive, learning and adapting in our simple mission that, even in its failure, will not matter in the greater scheme of a galaxy inside the incomprehensible depth of our universe. Thank you for sticking with me if you did. This will serve as a springboard for plenty more writing for Peter. He deserves it; so many people find earthly reasons to be sad; Pete, i promise you for as long as I can, I will help you be as happy as you possibly can for as long as I exist. Love, Dad