My sister accuses me of being sentimental; hardly an accusation as I freely admit it, although I'd prefer to say I'm a sentimental rationalist.
When I was small ... not long enough for my feet to reach the end of the bath ... I would lie in the water for hours at a time. Often I would read a book end-to-end as I periodically topped up with hot water, my skin wrinkled, and a cup of forgotten tea would slowly go cold. Other times I floated with my head balanced on the back of the bath, and told myself long, detailed, and fantastical made-up stories. Eventually my mother would march in and order me out, to which I would respond "Just a little longer, let me finish telling myself my story". Since that time I've grown long enough for my toes to reach the end of the bath, but not much else has changed; I still like to tell myself stories in the greatest of detail. Granted, the stories are no longer about being able to fly or travel in time, but my stories still imagine the possibilities of "if", and are still plagued by the same recurring problem. The problem is this. I'd get trapped in finding ways to make sure the story was consistent with the laws of nature, or at least the laws as they existed in my story world. Many times my stories would never get finished because I ended up investing so much time in making up explanations for how it was possible for me to fly, or how the paradoxes of time travel could be reconciled. As a child this usually meant I invented whole new branches of imaginary physics and worked through all their interconnected consequences. But at least my imaginary world was consistent! (I once tried to write a story for my daughter, about the Oëbble Goëbble man, but after a hundred pages or so the story had barely moved forward because I was so bogged down by the multitude of footnotes, diversions, and explanations that I felt needed to be included ... I must finish it.) This issue was and is important to me, because it gave my fantasy a possible reality, and it allows me to interpret my experiences of the true reality. Perhaps this is why I became a scientist. As an adult I still have this problem. My reality needs rationality. I don't have to be able to understand everything, but I do need a system of reasoning that consistently fits the facts. If an explanation is not consistent with the evidence, then I won't trust it. I want to know how things can be true when all the intelligent idiocy in this world moves my emotions. All these stories (nightmares?) that we daily live out, I want to know how they can be real. The rationalist in me wants to make sense of it, and to understand the rationale for what I see and hear. For example. How is it be possible that the richest 62 people have as much wealth as half the world - that story is almost as amazing as being able to travel in time. Or, what laws of nature could let someone like Trump come within striking distance of the presidency? In which fantastical world do people deliberately undermine the global economic system simply to benefit themselves as they hurt others? Why are there so many religions? What is sex? Which system of twisted thinking makes people support Zuma? What does it mean to say "There is a God"? I want to know if there is a rationale to all this, for there is certainly an emotion. I don't expect to have to like the explanation, because "like" is merely a transient emotion rooted in incomplete understanding. But I like truth, so the more I understand what is true, the more I will feel the "like". In my childhood I created worlds with natural laws that any sane people would say are unreal. Yet, in this life there seems to be real natural laws that people want to call unreal. But in this case their unwillingness to accept is not because the laws are the product of imagination, but because they are desperate to find an explanation acceptable to their sensibilities. Many simply generalize the unexplained into an insipid "spirituality" ... but such relativistic spiritualities are full of internal contradictions. That is what is not acceptable to me - they're too contradictory to be true. And so to the biggest story of all (to me): my life! What laws of nature and super-nature give the reality to my experience. My working thesis is this: there is a God who exists apart from the physical universe, and this God has a personality. I've searched for this God, but the personality is inconsistently expressed in every religion I've explored, except one. All the institutions of religion seem merely to be fragile lenses that distort whatever truth may be behind them. Even atheism doesn't satisfy, and is probably the worst "religion" to explain the evidence. I find only Jesus is (disturbingly) able to integrate the apparent paradoxes of life, and does so by reconciling perfect love and perfect justice. Many reject this because the solution is unpalatable to their incomplete understanding, and they let their emotions lead them by the nose into self-defined realities that have about as much credence as some of my bathtub fantasies. I don't fully understand Jesus - far from it. But I have yet to find inherent contradictions that would collapse (t)his fantastical story - it bears the mark of consistency with life. The laws of (t)his nature are fully compliant with my experience; the suffering and injustices, the pleasures and the people, all the evidence is reconciled.
1 Comment
Nancy
26/1/2016 07:55:39 am
WOW! Delightful story and truth well tuned together. May I post it on face book?
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Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
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