Wouldn’t it be nice if we could plan for every contingency, every pathway and every possibility?

I’d like to think this is possible, but it’s only as a result of the direct experience of being reactive to situations that you can build a proactive measure. But, what if you don’t have the time for such experiences?

What if it’s go-time?
What if too much is on the line to falter that much?

Then it’s time to learn from others. This is where ancient wisdom and the people before us who have made the same pathways are our guide. This is where books come in handy, strategies from observation and direct advice from those who have been there.

It’s one thing to learn it on your own, but much better to learn from those who want to share. When you’re proactive to a fault, you won’t be prepared for everything, but very few things will be able to surprise you.

I am struck by this post from Seth Godin about the media making us out to be astronomers.

One line summary: the media leads us to believe we are passive witnesses to the world in the same way astronomers are passive witnesses to the universe.

It’s easy to see the helplessness written on our faces as we are bombarded by all the chaos of the moment, finding it easier to just hope for the best rather than take action. After all, given the scale of what’s happening, our actions may seem so minor—so insignificant.

It will take a great feat by a great person and that’s just too big of a bill to pay right now.

But… when you consider the consequences of actions are not from a great few (although they inspire and do move the needle), but from the multitude, it becomes more manageable. For instance, we often think of employee theft as one person stealing thousands of dollars, when the reality is hundreds of employees stealing a few dollars… totaling thousands.

Making change isn’t one great act, but thousands of people making thousands of little ones.

What little act can we do today?

At the suggestion of my neighbour, I watched through the entirety of a show called “The Good Place.” This is quite the feat as I don’t remember the last time I finished a TV series (aside from the thousandth repeat of Paw Patrol).

However, the series hooked me for many reasons (many of them Theological and Philosophical) and ended on a perfect note. In fact, everyone who has watched the show make the same comment about the ending.

Being the book nerd I am, I went ahead and ordered the philosophy book the writer based the show on (“What We Owe to Each Other” by T.M. Scanlon) and will gleefully dive into it, muddling through each page.

One thing I can’t help think about, though, is that very question:

What do we owe to each other?

Humans haven’t really changed much over the past hundred thousand years. Our technology has changed, the landscape is different and our knowledge base has increased by magnitudes, but we still act pretty much the same.

We still repeat the same mistakes.

People continue to be jerk face jerks.

We continuously lie to each other and ourselves.

So what do we owe? Why bother helping anybody out?

It almost feels like we shouldn’t, yet we have this desire to do so anyway. We’re wary of motives, but we want to believe in the best of each individual.

It’s the reason Canadians will jump out of their own cars and help push someone else’s car that is stuck in the snow. Or why we have collections at work when somebody has a baby… or when someone passes away.

I know the final answer won’t come after a book (although books hold the answers to so many questions), but I do know this invisible, subconscious contract we have with each other is the only reason we’re here today.

It’s easy to sit there on the couch, watching a commercial about the latest exercise gimmick and go, “I can do that. I can get in shape while watching TV, like I’m doing right now. Seems pretty easy.”

Or to watch some ridiculous feat of humanity (triathlons always seem that way to me) and tell yourself that you could probably do one.

Maybe there is some motivation and that’s what gets you to day one.

But then you realize that decision was made while sitting on the couch eating a snack, which is when the self-negotiation begins to take place. It’s usually in the form of justifications for why your goal was too ridiculous and that it’s okay to give up or settle for something else. Often, the operative word that comes up is “later” or “tomorrow.”

We do this to ourselves in many facets, creating thick layers of justification for it every step of the way until we eventually give up on it completely for “good reason.”

A decision made in our comfort zone will always be challenged the moment things get uncomfortable. The only way out is to stay in that discomfort and push it further.

Narrative is our most powerful tool at our disposal, overriding the weak memory systems we have in place. While we’d like to think our memories are vivid, many studies have proven this to be false.

In the scientific community, eyewitness account is actually the least verifiable form of evidence.

We can unwillingly, and often, create memories about our past that never happened.
We can dictate things about ourself that are blatantly not true.
Yet, we believe them.

And we need them.

A strong mind is one that can deceive itself because it builds a stronger sense of identity. If we didn’t have that in place, we’d be mired in self-pity without a way out.

Sometimes, the one thing we need is to tell a better story about ourself.

Especially if it’s a lie.

There’s some great memes floating around to show the passing of time. Here are a few of my favourites:

Basically, it’s an attempt to make my generation feel old. While there’s always been attempts to do so with previous generations, the difference is ours have the Internet to lament about it.

However, I look at a much bigger picture:

Consider how much the world has changed since the moon landing and the release of the Lion King vs. the release of the Lion King and today. While we can wax nostalgic about “back in the day,” but I wouldn’t trade any of our gains to go back to that moment.

What I’m more concerned about are the things that haven’t changed and should have over the last fifty years.

I just hope my kids will look back twenty five years from now and be much happier about the world at that time.

It was a Saturday morning like any other. The kids were up early, itching to watch some cartoons and play while we, the parents, caffeinated ourselves and prepared for the day ahead.

This morning was marked by a special occasion—a field trip.

An immersive Van Gogh exhibit we purchased tickets for months prior.

Through circumstances that were unexplained, getting the kids out the door was smooth and traffic was light all the way there. We arrived early and secured our spot as first in line.

We were let in to the four rooms of this experience, the first of which were swaths of text to give background information. Interesting to me and my wife, but hardly a concern for kids who want to run.

The second room was a darkened, cozy area, with a light display augmented with text and music. A neat foray into the artistic side of things and held the interest of my three year old for an entire two minutes, but they quickly ran off to the penultimate area.

Consider an abandoned warehouse, but overtaken by the creativity of many people who want to honour an artist who saw the beauty of nature. Upon entering the room, I was struck by its magnificence.

I stopped, mouth gaped open while feeling lost in the exhibit around me. The combination of artistic representation and music merged to create a euphoric experience that could barely be described by the mystics.

Sure, I took pictures and some video, but they pale in comparison to just being there.

It makes you stop.

I didn’t want to leave.

My kids danced as the art flowed across the walls and floor, captivated by all that was happening around them. I danced with them. We sat together and watched, then left when the experience ran its course.

I’m still thinking about it.

In our fast-paced world that changes by the minute, giving us cultural amnesia with every passing year, how often are we struck by something so beautiful that it causes us to sit with it for the day?

Perhaps it’s out there, but we are ignoring it… just like the artist on display who only sold one painting in his lifetime, but is still teaching us how to see.

We’ve learned through our history lessons that the best way to destroy a culture is to eradicate its language, all its artifacts (especially anything written) and layer a narrative on top of it.

The Spanish did a spectacular job of doing this with their encounter with the Aztecs.

They emphasized sacrifices to such an extent that by the time they wanted to wipe out remaining traces of the defeated civilization, the bloody sacrifices were almost the only thing that was retained.

And yet, don’t do we do this with people?

We reduce a person to such a narrow narrative that it’s the only thing we will accept about them, blinding ourselves to anything else. Our reductive minds just can’t resist culling away everything except what we want to see… and what we want others to see about them.

Our problem isn’t our unwillingness to know others—it’s our willingness to expand our narrative.

I always found it frustrating as a teen when someone told me “the solution is complicated” or “there is no real answer.” To me, it was a cop out from providing a straight forward response. 

Of course there’s an answer. You just have to admit it!

Unfortunately, you come to realize that all answers have consequences and those consequences create further questions—even problems. Many times, the answers we give, in an effort to provide one, create unintended consequences.

To me, this is the appeal of the philosophers who spend their days ruminating about various answers. They can provide thought experiments to show potential solutions and further issues, getting humanity slightly closer to some semblance of an answer to life’s biggest questions. 

Of course, there’s never a real answer and the problem we’re running into now is that we need one. 

We’ve hit the precipe of when technology needs moral responses to its programming. Otherwise, it will just run rampant with whatever biological bias its engineer has. It’s a massive responsibility to take on with an even greater question behind it:

Who is even equipped to provide such answers?

It used to be that you learned something and that knowledge was relevant for the rest of your life.

Not anymore.

The pace of change is so rapid that even the foremost experts at the edges of their field can’t keep up. We’re constantly in flux and constantly adapting.

The archetype of the wise sage on the mountain is now nothing more than a character in a story because knowledge is no longer stagnant. While we still turn to our elders for those life lessons that just can’t be learned by anything but experience, it’ll be our children who will teach us what we need to know.

In many ways, they’re already doing it.