It’s a quiet afternoon. Everything is still. The temperature is soothing, so soothing that even the birds are quiet. Outside my porch there’s a big field of green. Beyond it lies a sleeping forest, and above it a pale cyan sky peeking through ice cream clouds.
On days like this, it’s hard to ask yourself why we’re here. This world seems as if it was made for us. On the other hand, it seems like it was made for dolphins, hyenas and viruses as well.
Science tells us we’re here because primordial slime combined into living organisms, which after a lot of trouble evolved into the massively complex lifeforms we are today. But that’s not really an answer, or rather, that wasn’t the question.
Perhaps the question isn’t put correctly. Perhaps we just happen to be here, and we should be thankful for the time we get, and then it’s over. The question then turns into – why were we made to want a bigger answer?
Should we stop searching for something bigger – and choose to believe in whatever makes us happy? Even if it turns out to be wrong, perhaps it still would have made our existence here more meaningful?
Well, the thing is I want to KNOW I’m on the right path, or I’d have to put pretty big blinders on not to feel as if I deceive myself. And I don’t want to be one of those happy-go-lucky individuals who go “Well, I know much of my religion doesn’t make sense, but I feel good believing so I’ll go on believing”. I’d rather know the truth and be unhappy. Or even better, know the truth and like where it leads.
Are we too greedy? Shouldn’t we be thankful for the time we get, and make the most of it? But that’s not human nature – all the insecurities we carry around put a stop to that. We want to know everything will be all right, no matter what mistakes we made in life. That’s why religions offering that are so popular, I guess.
If we DO believe this is all we get, where can we go to find something bigger? Well, it is inside us and all around us. The body is a wonderful world comparable in complexity to the small world in my back yard, in turn comparable to the Earth’s neighborhood – the Milky Way, in turn comparable to the hundreds of billions of galaxies science knows of so far.
The Universe and all in it seems to be here for us to revel in – is that too little to ask?
Ahh, nice topic
. It keeps coming up quite frequently in the last time, and I had enough opportunities to think about my point of view to write a rather longish posting about it. Hope to find the time and mood for it before the end of this week.
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