Musings of a Middle Aged Man

If I had to venture a guess, I would say the meaning of life question has been around since the dawn of consciousness. Following fast on the heels of the statement, "I am!" came the question, "Why am I?" and has been an overarching concern ever since it spilled off a hominid's tongue. There is evidence the Neanderthals buried their dead ritualistically, so it may have occur...

I have heard a few possible answers to this question. The are two primary positions. Theists claim the mind, euphemism for soul, is primary, with the body little more than a temporary vessel in which the soul is forged by God's holy fire. The discarded body is destined for the pyre or an eternity trapped in a coffin after the soul departs and returns to its true home in Heaven. From a biologic...

As infants and into toddlerhood, our brain embarks on a developmental course with an extraordinary burst of synapse production, a process known as synaptogenesis. Our minds rapidly absorb knowledge and experiences at an age when we are not mature enough to differentiate between the keep because it is helpful, discard because it is detrimental. The subconscious takes in all and stores all for futur...

Humanity is so prone to making mistakes that there exists a quip that goes, "To err is human. To forgive is divine." Even the quip contains errors where it presupposes a divinity exists and that the divine deity cares two rat turds about humanity enough to embrace the concept of forgiveness for we petulant apes. This thinking is foundational to one of the two greatest errors humanity has...

Literature is littered with parable type stories about people who employed underhanded methods to wrest immortality from the gods and make it their own. Because who wouldn't want to live forever? In all such stories I have read or seen on the tube, the outcome undermines the wannabe immortal and a crucial lesson is imparted to the audience. All, that is, except the Highlander Movie series, whe...

I was raised in a faith system that viewed humans as inherently wicked, starting with the purest infant whose soul was steeped in original sin, a blemish passed down through Adam and Eve, afflicting every person ever born, save the Christ, who was purported to always exist without the stain of sin, either original or committed while alive. Other traditions in the same faith line extend the inheren...

I was indoctrinated into the Catholic religion long before I had the maturity to make an informed decision, a conscious, rational decision as to whether or not Catholicism aligned with the unique rendering of my soul. It started when I was a few weeks old, placing me permanently on the double secret catholic rolls never to be expunged. The overt persuasion continued through my vulnerable years wit...

American Pie is an epic song, the classicest of classic rock, an iconic tune from my generation, a defining ditty dominating the 1970s airwaves despite being considered too lengthy for radio. It was populated with enough imagery to fill multiple poems, none of which would be as impactful as the same lyrics set to engaging music. It encapsulates both the spirit and anxiety rippling through the Amer...

I have recently become enthralled by the BBC Human 2025 mini-series. The five episodes, narrated by Ella Al-Shamahi, examine the history of six human species that were in existence over the past 300,000 years. The series progresses chronologically from origins in sub-Saharan Africa through their wandering across the globe into virtually every ecosystem before eventually choosing to abandon the nom...

Man's closest ancestors and parallel human species are the Denisovans and the Neanderthals, both with whom we share a common ancestor. The split occurred some 550,000 years ago. We were genetically close enough to both species to interbreed and produce fertile offspring, as evidenced by the 1-2% Neanderthal DNA found in Homo Sapiens, modern humans, except for the sub-Saharan Africans who conta...

Sometimes, when the weather is too miserable to be outside and my daily meditation writing has been converted to bits and bytes, I scroll through YouTube videos picking up bits and tids of interesting information. Most videos are relatively short, making it extremely easy to fall into a video vortex, losing hours that can never be recovered for future investment. One of the YouTube rabbit holes I...

The Bible is rather cryptic when it comes to identifying the antichrist. End time prophecies predict there will be a single AntiChrist appearing after the rapture, the bodily ascension of believers who were spirited away to spend an eternity with the Christ. The same verse, 1 John 2:18, also claims there are many antichrists amongst the target audience long before the rapture event. I guess there...

Growing up in my era, it was not uncommon to hear the phrase, "Just who do you think you are?" This was not a query begging a metaphysical answer from our psyches. It was an admonishment to stay in our lane, to not get involved in certain things, not because we did not hold crucial information, but rather because our status was beneath the lofty realm in which we inserted ourselves. The...

There is an inordinate amount of inane chatter in the US claiming that the people of the country, the entire world, need healing from their fallen ways. By that, they mean that God needs to be inserted into everyday life via laws based on biblical standards so people can live moral and prosperous lives. It includes posting the 10 Commandments in school classrooms to indoctrinate the students into...

It is natural for children to be afraid of the dark. The physical darkness, absent ambient light, forces them to navigate by tentative touches to get an incomplete feeling for the immediate surroundings they cannot see. Is the elephant a wall, a snake, a spear, a tree, a fan, a rope? The visual can say none of the above. The blind hold steadfast to their misaligned interpretations. It is, after al...

Our nearest evolutionary ancestors, the Neanderthals, existed for 400,000 years, during which time they successfully inhabited less than 10% of Earth's landmass. They lived primarily in Europe, Western and Central Asia, extending into southern Siberia. Their highest densities were in France, Spain, and Italy. Homo Sapiens, our species, has existed for 300,000 years. In that time, we have manag...

I have recently stumbled upon a BBC television series highlighting the scientific facts along with the cultural and emotional threads tying modern humans with the evolutionary past and the six other human species, born by Earth mother, that have existed over the past 300,000 years. Ritualistic behaviors were moderate in our closest ancestors, the Neanderthals with whom we interbred, as identified...

The security in which an artist should never seek refuge is either personal or financial, which drives them to avoid provocative or innovative works, fearing backlash, censorship, or persecution with the corresponding loss of income. This can weaken the arts' impact on society because the art is safe. Safe art is not doing the job of art. Worse than that...

There are several adventures that have been on my bucket list for what seems like forever, but it is closer to forty years. Two were planted in my psyche by author Colin Fletcher when he wrote books about his 1958 walk from the bottom to the top of California and his book about hiking the length of the Grand Canyon in 1963. Those books placed both the Pacific Coast Trail and a rim-to-rim hike of t...

Growing up, I remember being indoctrinated into the colloquialism that 'practice makes perfect' as a way to encourage the repeated rehearsal of actions or behaviours to perfect our ability to execute them as flawlessly as possible, with the ultimate goal of perfect execution. The fundamental flaw in the expression is that practicing anything imperfectly achieves excellence in imperfection,...

For a significant portion of my life, beginning from when I was eleven years old, my parental units owned a cottage in central Wisconsin lake country. Not blessed with generational wealth, we spent the majority of our vacations from the early days of tent camping, through a camper, eventually replaced by a prefab cottage, lovingly termed the summer estate, making visits easier and more frequent. E...

I have posted over 4,500 blogs on the interweb and have written two unpublished books with a third underway, and have numerous other writings either collecting dust in journals scattered throughout my home or long lost in the scrap heaps of time. Estimating an hour per blog entry, the investment is more than 180 consecutive days of writing 24 hours a day, nonstop. Realistically, the two books writ...

It is not uncommon to view birth and death as extreme opposites on a linear life continuum. But are they? This is a concept fitting the thought patterns of a Western mind indoctrinated in linear time thinking, not so much for a person inculcated into the Eastern mind viewing time as circular. Birth and Death could be envisioned as the same swinging door...

t is a long-standing and well-established fact that the majority of humans will experience Presbyopia beginning sometime in their 40s to 60s that will see them requiring reading glasses or some other form of near vision correction to see clearly in close quarters. By the early to mid-60s, the degeneration plateaus negating the need for stronger and stronger corrective lenses. My near vision does s...

My first reaction upon walking through the Chaco Canyon ruins was to be struck by awe, awe and wonder, then marvel at the masonry still partially standing more than one thousand years after the bricks were carefully laid to exacting standards using earthen mortar between the carefully shaped sandstone blocks by ancient hands. Those craftsmen are long lost to the mysteries hidden by long time. The...