The Best of Things Learned (Part 1 of ?)
When we have learned enough to really live, we are old enough to die. And we die in part because we can never go home again. Our unique self, created by chance, with our given genetic cards, given environment and given age in which we live—got exposed to God’s laws which govern the evolutionary process. To the extent we are like most humans, we depended heavily on help from others to achieve some goals, being a self made achiever (aka Terrell Owens) not a reality.
Unlike other species, most of what we learn came from those humans before us, and thus we achieve new heights of living on the shoulders of the ‘giants’ who came before us. We learn that enlightenment does not always generate happiness, that there is more sadness in human lives than contentment, that we are not all created equal at all, that the Golden Rule is the basis of ethics, that any Heaven is right here on earth in the form of achieving maximized personal contentment with our own lives. Contentment itself is a tricky essence that is never pure, but dwells along side our sense of regret that there is so much suffering by so many for so many different reasons. We learn that any inability to appreciate diversity and the role diversity plays in the evolutionary process will make us incapable of achieving much contentment in our own lives—after all, there then being so many heathens/non replicates of ourselves all around us. If we cannot appreciate diversity and be enriched by it, we suffer endless irritation by these others all our lives (aka Donald Trump).
If we are fortunate, we learn to appreciate nature and seek to feel being a part of nature, not treat nature as something to be used up whenever convenient. We find a way to understand that Mother Nature bats last. No species yet has controlled it’s own destiny. In fact over 97% of species ever existing are now extinct. We learn that human values, not family values, are the obligatory demands after the formative years of our offspring is completed. The care of all adults is the responsibility of all adults via the Golden Rule, and that government exists for just that purpose. Yes, for human society to be a healthy one, we are all, individually and collectively, our brother’s keeper. To the extent we cannot find the will to protect and nurture the less fortunate—we are, in reality, their executioner. Every major empire in history fell essentially because their foreign empire of some sort was too expensive to maintain, and at home too much of that nation’s wealth was in the hands of the wealthy few. “If we cannot save the many who are poor, we cannot save the few who are rich.”
We learn that compulsive behaviors of any sort are self destructive, that failure to properly judge when enough is enough, of most anything, will never lead to personal contentment. We learn that science, not feelings, not inherited religious dogma, leads to correct answers about life. We learn that some aspects of life are beyond reason like sex, the extent of our own personal importance, what God is like, where God came from, and the direction of evolution in the future.
We learn to accept that death is a natural end point of life. No one gets out of this world alive. We learn that it is our personal right to control our own dying process via written directives, or sane decisions at the time we make the very personal decision as to when enough is enough. We have no need to fear death, just to fear that social and religious dogmas might force us to endure a difficult and tortured dying process. To fear death is to have never accepted with gratitude the fact that we had a chance to exist at all. Gratitude should be the dominant personal emotion during the dying process. To accept life with gratitude for the chance, and not generate the illusion that God (however defined) will save us from danger, negate any of the laws which govern the evolutionary process on our behalf in order to enhance our own life—then we avoid ending up in life feeling “Why God has thou forsaken me?” The exceptions are of course murders, sudden fatal disasters of any sort, including accidents—these kind of deaths are not seeped in gratitude. Tragedies in life are everywhere. Evolution is genius, but the process can often be brutal—one of those no pain, no gain processes. We don’t play the lottery because we can do anything to make us win, but because we have a chance to win, no matter how slim. Being born was essentially an involuntary lottery.
A musing of this sort cannot written all at one time. We spend a lifetime learning so much about so many aspects of life. Learning is personal. Conclusions differ. For me, learning is what gives life the most meaning. Retirement is a great time in that there is enough time available to learn and cogitate in depth about all that we have experienced in life. Learning is self rewarding, it contributes to personal contentment, it is inexpensive, it mellows us out, it is something we can best do on our own. Of course it has limitations and is subject to human error. So from time to time, in the quietude of peculiar moments, the time will be ripe to address other ‘best things learned about life’. Nothing in bold letters here, or everything would be in bold letters.
