Turning why to how

My husband is now officially retired, so yesterday we spent the day with our nine-month-old granddaughter. She is studying the concepts in and out. She practices with great intensity and focus, noticing how this reality works.

Particle physicist Lawrence Krauss says that every why question is really a how question in our drive to figure out the workings of the universe. 

Take, then, the question, "Why seek happiness?" and turn it into "How is it that the sentient world seems programmed to draw back from every kind of pain?" Or, "How do we define pain, define good/bad?" Or.... 

Or back to more simply, How can I be happy right now? Well, I notice in this moment, in this place, all is well enough with me that my life carries into the next moment, why not define this as happy? How not define this as happy...

The Ideas of Science

“The ideas change our perspective of our place in the cosmos, and to me, that’s what great art, music, and literature is all about. When you see a play, or see a painting or hear a wonderful piece of music in some sense, it changes your perspective of yourself, and that’s what science does in a profoundly important way and in a way with content that matters.” Dr. Lawrence Krauss in a Krista Tippett interview.

Let us do what we can―

Not dream impossible dreams or climb every mountain,

But dream one possible dream and climb one splendid mountain,

That our life may be blessed with attainable meaning.  

                                                                               ~Forrest Church

"Water runs uphill toward money." Heard on NPR as a common quote.

Life long participants

"There are no bystanders in this life....Our humanity makes us each a part of something greater than ourselves," writes Sonia Sotomayor in My Beloved World.

I am among the many who live in obscurity. Lucky me. Seriously.

Famous people tell the stories of how difficult it is to live in a spotlight. Yes, surely so. To have every public moment shadowed and reported on must be daunting, often humiliating. To say nothing of how fame is the thief of safety and other freedoms. 

And yet, the ones in the spotlight have no clearer, deeper vision of their real influence in this life than any of the rest of us. Think of it. how do they know their real influence? How do we know our own real influence? Where is the yardstick, the scale, the measuring cup? Just think of it.

Thus it seems worth the effort to attempt to steadily hold an underlying awareness that everything we do (or don't do) matters, whether or not we can tell how it matters. Indeed, "There are no bystanders in this life."