What it amounts to.

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.

We each of us believe ourselves in positions of special knowledge, that we comprehend a little better about things than everyone else. No one knows who we really are but us; no one understands what we go through but our own selves; our reasons, our excuses: there is something about them that make them right. Everyone else? That’s a different story — they’re not us, and they don’t know. Do they? Don’t they? Perhaps only when it is convenient for us, it may be then they should understand our point of view....

It is perhaps a graduation to a certain level of maturity when we truly fathom that there are other people looking out of those other eyes. I think some of us never get around to realizing this; some will always look at the “other” and never see someone who is fundamentally the same as him. But I think it is no mistake that this understanding is a difficult one, that such things are hidden from our normal sight. Like God secret among all things, it takes a certain faith to see this “other,” but such a vision: for who can love who has not this sight? What a reward to he who cares to look....

Small

I am small: I fit in between
two sentences, tighter than a period.
I have imagined great spaces,
taller than Babel, wider
than all the skies that have
ever poured themselves into poetry;
but these visions
all can be thought in the confines
of the tiniest dreaming.
I have found I am only
fulfilling what is right when
I am afflicted, when I am torn
between the two pathways
out of the dreadful
decision, and I am made
smaller still when
the possibility collapses, and
the many potentials I was
becomes the one, actual choice.
The only one that notices me
is me, and sometimes,
even I forget myself, entirely:
I affect so little, the
experience is so much larger than
anything I am, that I am
swallowed by any moment
larger than a hello.
Have you seen me? You will forget.
Even this poem, in one
fell progression from one
minute to the next, one
other thought will extinguish
that you ever read this,
that anything existed here at all.

In creativity is a touch of the infinite:
the echo of our Creator when we pluck something from the void:
a dance with eternity to stretch the borders of the world.

Every philosophical concept will have a counterexample, which it cannot account for. It is, I believe, fundamental to thinking itself. It is my conjecture to say that one can find an argument against anything, that 1 + 1 = 2 is not safe, that one can disbelieve even that he exists. But too, I believe that not all of these counterarguments make of what they contest a heap of illogic. For sometimes, these contraries miss the point of what they try to disprove, and that one might to fruition look for a counterargument to the counterargument — though that may prove somewhat more difficult. It is not that logic itself is flawed, that these things happen, merely that possibility is so rich. To even all of God’s theories, it may be, the Devil has counterexamples, but I believe He lets the argument rest — not the best way to spend eternity, I think, playing only on how things appear.

we have all dreamed of something better, sometimes
without knowing why or even how we do so.
we awake and face the day with that little voice in the back of our heads,
believe! believe! …and we think nothing of it, try and forget…
for what motivation shall we surrender our trust?
…and the feeling comes, the secret jesus whispers to us…
no reason to believe but that such a dream — it may be true.

We feel something. We are caught in the moment, and we cannot conceive that we would feel any other way about it, this tremendous thing. When we are young, we believe that each love, as it happens, will last forever. And when it is over, we think we will never love again, that the heartbreak is the world coming to its pitiful end. We learn however, it is not so, that these things we experience — we learn otherwise about these things that seem to mean so much. One might be tempted, as these things rise and fall, to believe the opposite. That there is nothing that lasts, and there is nothing that matters (much). Yet perhaps there are things in the world that though we let go of them, they do not let go of us, elements of the eternal that infiltrate our finity —Êand we become part of something so much larger than we can conceive. It is up to us each to wonder what these might be, but perhaps you know of what I speak: the things we imagine that on our dying day, lying with our energies expiring: the things, then, that we do not regret.

Not all of us want to know the answers to the BIG QUESTIONS. Some of us do; we make as if we are holy warriors to conquer all the world in the name of TRUTH. These of us, we have wings of our own fashioning, to fly higher in the airs of philosophy, theology, neuromancy: in other words, no, our feet are simply not firmly planted on the ground, and sometimes, a strong enough wind will lose us down pathways of the heavens where there is no logical exit. But like I said, not all of us are like that. Some of us live all of himself with both feet stoutly on terra firma, and don’t even look up to see all those wannabe angels going at it with their paper swords. Now, a lot of those “up there” look down on those who are earth-bound, but there are a few — just a few — who know somewhere in their hearts that though the air up there is full of those BIG QUESTIONS thrown and cast about, it may be that those down there have answered them. Just for themselves, no one else. Just little answers, some daily bread, enough to sustain them for today. And any of those who understand, they know this, too: there is no other day but today.

Like all ordinary people, miracles have made me....
There is much magic we will never be without, never notice;
we need not wonder what God dreams about, but look: this is it.

I cannot say what will do the trick for you if you’ve never had it happen. It is like the whole world opening up for you, a brand new universe that now shows its colors. And you may try to seal yourself up from it, have shut up your soul as if by a lock whose key you have forgotten where it is, but to refuse it from your heart you will find is useless. If it wants to happen, nothing can stop it. How many people have said it is futile, it is useless, and worse: that it is a lie. But it’s just that they have never had it happen to them, and they are merely overcome in the blindness that holds the whole world in darkness. Listen, I am no spokesman. If you never had it happen, you may feel cheated when you hear the word, you may feel it has nothing to do with anything. But maybe, you’ve just heard it wrong, or just weren’t ready to hear its simple message. To believe. There is one name that is above all other names, and it is Jesus.

– John H. Doe

Steal Me!