The chalk in Mr. Suggs hand tapped out a familiar rhythm of Morse code on the black board leaving white contrails on the subject of cell structure. Class had started 10 minutes ago and the plasma membrane was no more clear to me than a series of dots and dashes. Our new 6th grade science teacher was in his mid twenties, barely starting his teaching career. His brown hair was neatly combed to the side, he wore dark-rimmed glasses and a tie. His effect was less Buddy Holly, concertedly more Clark Kent.
Some moments are indelible. What happened next is one of these. The door to the classroom swung open and in rushed a girl, a mass of dark curls just rolled out of bed. Mr. Suggs had her take a seat behind me. The lesson continued and then halted again to rectify that the girl had nothing to write with. "Can anyone lend Michelle a pencil?", Mr. Suggs queried. I grabbed a yellow #2 from my supplies bag and shifted in my chair to offer it to this unconventional student. The moment she welcomed that shared pencil a lifelong friendship sparked.
We spent the rest of the year swooning over Mr. Suggs as he defined weather cycles, spoke on the solar system and summarized genetics. We were locked in a gravitational pull that only brought us closer as my brother died in a car accident and she continued to step over her drunk mother on the bathroom floor. We gladly held to one another, trying to test out of that which seemed trivial by comparison.
When I went away to college I backed myself into the outer reaches of the United States, a place I could finally be separated from all I had known. I didn't trample into the muddied, sleet-sloshing streets of New York City but ebbed into the still, silent snowdrift some six hours Upstate. Remote and languid, activities were limited to conversation, creating art and contemplation. I went to my scheduled classes and audited many more. The outskirts of town were dotted with trees, sheep and alpaca, but little in the way of people. One evening a few friends and I wandered into those pastured hills. We stopped to lay in some soft grasses along a desolate road as the night sky enveloped our shadows. The deep glittering universe blanketed over our bodies and spilled into our eyes. We spoke sparingly and quietly, as one does when engulfed and sedated by awe.
I hadn't been focused enough to learn the Morse code of physics in high school. Mr. Suggs had taken me so far as the gates of the atomic nucleus and left me behind. At the time, grief weighted my pencil. I could go no further. But then, audited classes and hours in the collegiate library created a neural Bering Straight which allowed me to translate a few dots and dashes of the subatomic. I crossed over that bridge in wonderment. I am still crossing it now.
Indelible moments often arrive in an instant like a flash from the face of a camera. But, sometimes they arrive serenely and lay next to you in the grasses at the side of the road. Peering into the depths of stars that evening made me keenly aware of their quantum antithesis. I lay at the apex between vast space where black holes suffocate light and where the smallest particles easily pass through solid surfaces like phantoms.
These opposing edges of space bracketed a duality that shone a light on everything in between. I seemed to see everything at once. My perspective splayed out like a fan encompassing all of my periphery, its surface a painters palette of perception and interpretation. All I have learned in the past and all there is to discover congregates on that palette to this day. What I know, or rather think I know gets processed, edited and mixed here. The resulting interpretations emerge with the strangeness of Salvador Dali, introspection of Frida Kahlo and the heart of Bob Ross.
The learning perspective expands its thinking and takes in as many variables as possible. It avoids squinting through a mental monocular. It try's to see objectively life as it unfolds, people as they behave the way they do and the myriad events that occur in rapid-fire worldwide. It holds in its periphery what it knows of past history and speculates future outcomes. It is a place of humility and diplomacy, a place where obvious personal biases must be checked. This perspective is not organized into neat rows of zeros and ones, but marbleized. Information bleeds and blends and forms new patterns of thought. Rare areas of solidification are those that allow for doing one's best and those that staunchly rebuff harm to others. Mostly, the learning perspective remains optimally fluid.
Narrowed perspective is a funny thing, it can prompt wars or even hide atrocities in plain sight. There is equilibrium in a broad perspective and for this we trade our sense of certainty. We put so much effort into knowing and being certain. Yet, so much is inherently uncertain. When we accept this, most notably the fear of death is laid to bare. We will not know what becomes of us, until what becomes of us, is final. We hope what comes will be perfect and beautiful and eternal. This hope is painted in many different ways: It looks like heaven and hell and somewhere in between. It looks like reincarnation and sleeping with virgins and souls drifting in the cosmos and nothing at all. We put faith in these outcomes and cling here. We are driven to ascribe answers to the deeper questions. We ask, "Why?". Because of this we are disciplined and destructive, sensitive and brutal, enlightened and driven to madness. Answers form best when we understand the limitations of those answers. We know what we know only until we know more. Perpetual learning will create something entirely different than perpetual habit.
The more information we welcome into our periphery the more we will realize there are a heck-of-a-lot of moving parts out there. Complexity is one of the core elements of which mankind is comprised. The world's substrate is structured on paradox and on a massive scale. All told, it can appear as chaos. What we understand, given more information, may become something we don't understand at all. We are inundated by ever-changing times, cultural norms and events that skew our former notions; at times imperceptibly and others, monumentally. Further, these circumstances are ever engulfed-by and becoming part-of our past experiences, making us who we are right this moment. Multiply this by the world populous of 7.5 billion and that's a lot of individuals with different ideas of themselves and their world bumping, bouncing and often ramming into one another. We are the sum total of our unique experiences and we each, the billions of us, believe we are right. It's complicated, to say the least.
In order to not further complicate things, I lean towards simplicity. My pursuit to decode my world has few rules and this is precisely its vehicle of success:
I try to be respectful of others perceptions of the world - This can be hard to do, but their world is just as real to them as mine is to me.
I try to keep an open mind - I only know what I know, until I know more.
I strive to cause no harm - I don't trod on others physically or emotionally, to do so would be a deal breaker.
These rules can be looped like a dog chasing its own tail. If one is respecting others and keeping an open mind then they are unlikely to cause others harm. The dog that bites the tail will quickly learn, it only hurts itself.
Dichotomy appears to proliferate at the hands of humans because we just have our little hands in everything: we advance and regress, create and destroy, love and hate, birth and kill. We consciously observe and define such occurrences. We may have named dichotomy, but we did not invent it. It is natural to our world. Every living creature experiences it. Cause and effect are a perpetual, universal component. Opposing dichotomies came to us as surely as gravity's pull on two objects. But for humans, dichotomy is like a bad marriage we can't slough. It offers only variables, when what we seek are solid answers. Still, we are bound none the less. Dichotomy nests uncertainty at its breast and accepts it will not ween.
The human condition is our condition, like it or not. Such a statement may sound hopelessly stoic. But at its core is love, humility and empathy. We are human beings after all - sensitive and organic. Without our amazing hearts and minds our interactions would simply be reflex. We struggle to understand. We are in need of love and relief from our fears. Humility is necessary to navigate that which is inherently tricky. Empathy is required to love ourselves and to love others. We observe our world to learn and because we are inquisitive. We define our world because we question its contents. We change our world because we are problem solvers, and in turn problem creators. Chaos is part of our coding and I mean that in the most scientifically-respectful way.
The Morse codes we use are often made from different alphabets. Confusion amongst human beings is common. But some times the code matches perfectly like when I needed Michelle and she needed me all those years ago or when I looked into the night sky and never saw the world the same again. In these cases we understand more than dots and dashes. We understand what it's like to feel pain, love, and wonderment. This is a language we can all understand, no matter one's culture or age. It is the language of love and commonality and this is the very code that disarms uncertainty.
I am the first one to admit, I don't know much. But, that doesn't stop me from striving to know more. Learning is an ongoing assignment towards an ultimate thesis: I didn't take my life for granted. I tried to love myself and others. This is what I learned. Sometimes it's hard to be alive. So often it's exquisitely pleasant and joyful. Life is both shit-storm and paradise all at once and this is precisely why I love it so. Who knows, maybe one day I'll have it all figured out. But, let's hope not.
Disappearing Through the Skylight by O B. Hardison - This was the first book that opened my eyes to quantum physics. I read this in college, about the same time I lay under the stars with my friends. https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Through-Skylight-Technology-Twentieth/dp/014011582X
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