We don’t notice that miracles happen every day simply because they happen every day.

I sometimes wonder how we as a species get through this thing, confused as we are. That in itself almost makes you believe that there is a God. Do you remember the Cold War? Maybe I’m dating myself; maybe I’m getting old; I recall quite clearly planning out a future that had no future. Of hearing the news that the missiles were flying and going out into the middle of the street, lying down and waiting for the end. Myself, I never wanted to be one of the survivors of such a catastrophe. A lot of us don’t think about it much: we still have all those missiles. We still have the capability of destroying most, if not all, of the entire human race. No, the danger that we will has pretty much passed — and that’s why one is not prone to such thoughts anymore. We got through it, that danger, that overcast of potential annihilation, and I for one am a little amazed that nothing really came of it. Really. Makes you almost believe that some angel has been watching over us. Or maybe it’s like in all those movies — that there is a rag-tag group of unsung heroes that have saved the world, and no one knows about it. Seriously though, sometimes we’re damn lucky. Good things do happen, after all.

There are dreams that we wish we’d forget.
There are secrets that we will never know.
There are wonders that nobody ever sees.
There is love that pours out never to touch anyone.
There is time only to do a few of so many important things.
There is at the end, death, from which none escape.

And yet, this day can be so sweet.

One does not have to be great to practice humility.

I have dreamed of day that spilled through all shadows, until there was nothing but sunlight beaming through all the forgotten corners of the world. I have dreamed of night that never ended, we never to penetrate the darkness with any hope that dawn would ever approach this forsaken world. In the heights of my dreaming there were philosophies I never understood, and some I knew were meaningless, but a few I wondered how men could truly think such seraphic things. In the depths of my dreaming were a thousand brute urges, dark and thoughtless desires, and I cannot say that I resisted them all. If dreams reflect some part of us, this angel beast of a man that I am contends with himself: the light and dark are mostly mixed in me, but there are times when on wings I have soared to halo heights, and in dark I groped for degenerate things. I know which side I want to be on. But does the rest of me?

Time passes away like ships that silently go, whose sails are always unfurled, and the wind to them never abates. Youth, only is it observable from a distance, when it has sailed far past, comprehensible like a dream when one is suddenly and irrevocably awakened. Where do the days hurry off to? The world so easily forgets, somehow so much larger than when we were children, when in our little spheres, we were stars — so much more complicated. When did it become so that we were measured by how useful we are? And now, we are here. The world never forgets to age us one day each day, so much smaller than when we were children, when all possibilities were open to us, our future as wide as the starlit sky. Some of us have no dreams anymore. Some of us wonder what we should be doing, not that we do not what we have to, but imagining that life meant something more than necessity, once.

Is it enough merely to hope for hope? Even that may prove to some an infinite effort. For even to do that, perhaps, is to say to ourselves that life is not nothing — and that is something. Walking along a well-carved path, we may look up at that starlit sky again, and just for a moment, time has no meaning, and we are meant simply to wonder why. Why? We sail on often in waters that seem not to change for a vast expanse, but we have much traveled, and it shows in our faces. Sail on and on. We are all going somewhere, whether we like it or not, and we may choose where, and we may choose how — but not to go is not an option. So, choose. We are so much freer than we believe ourselves to be: what a world is ours that makes us forget that, but what a heart is ours that lets us remember.

I am wrong about everything. But then again, so is everybody. I don’t mean, when I say, “My name is John H. Doe,” or that the sun is yellow, that I am wrong about those things. When we speak of simple things, things that we have put labels on and then can read what we wrote on those labels — yes, we can be right in these most trivial senses. But when we try to predict, define, mandate, or comprehend anything of any real substance, we are inevitably mistaken. Much of progress is finding out how mistaken we were in the past. One of my great heroes, Albert Einstein, understood this, I think. He said, with his usual gentle humor, “As far as the mathematical theorems refer to reality, they are not sure, and as far as they are sure, they do not refer to reality.” Now that his Relativity is finally being proved to be inconsistent with some of the measurements being taken about actual phenomena, one might remember that he predicted that this would happen.

As far as heroes go, Albert was a good one. For even though we are always, unavoidably, wrong about everything, we still go on: predicting, defining, mandating, comprehending all manner of the deep things of the world, the little things, the huge things, the mysterious and the obvious. We make do. And Albert was such a good hero because he did not only tear down the scaffolding erected by Newtonian physicists who believed that such structure was as the firmament of heaven, but he built a new architecture — and told us that this was temporary, too. One might say that this philosophy, of trial and error, was one of the great lessons that the twentieth century left for us. Though as a work of man, it is liable, once again, to be wrong. But I am a product of my age, and this is what I have to work with, so I make do: even though I know I will be wrong, I will try: for even though we be mistaken, we may still do some good. Thus, there is still hope.

My philosophy of life, if I were hard pressed to put it into words, would be three words that I did not originate, and although I am a Christian, I find them to be more profound than anything Jesus Christ said in that good book: “God is love.” What these three words signify to me is that there is ultimately meaning to it all. I am also an existentialist. For all the definitions that exist for the term, to me what it fundamentally means is that you take responsibility for what you do. What I say about my being wrong about everything applies here: I am most probably terribly, horribly wrong in all that I believe about myself and the world. God is probably nothing like I conceive Him to be, nor is love. And whatever the meaning of any outlook on life, I am probably missing the point. However, learning from Albert, I understand that I am wrong. I find I must believe some things in order that I exist, and to wish to exist further. One might find that some of the things we use to cope make for a few startlingly effective philosophies.

Some physicists believe that when they die, God will show them just how everything works; some philosophers that God will tell them what the nature of truth really is. But maybe, instead, in Heaven they are not fed such answers, that instead, God will give them better questions to ask. For perhaps it is given us a few things to directly understand, like “love your neighbor,” as a parent feeds a child, but once the child is grown enough to know how to eat, He lets him feed himself. I for one might like to discover the deeper things on my own, if there be eternity to spend — even if they’ve been found before, by someone else. Too, sometimes the transcendent epiphany is the most mundane of understandings, thought by a billion people before you, but ignored by them all as meaningless. Too, sometimes no one says anything because it isn’t worth the bother. Let me say that only recently have I realized that I could affect the world. This site exists because of that realization. So, now, I’m still going to say what I say because I think it is worth the bother. I know I’ll be wrong. Even so, maybe I can still make a difference.