Just recently I started reading ?In Search of Stones: A Pilgrimage of Faith, Reason and Discovery,? by Dr. M. Scott Peck, and he noted something early on that stopped me in my tracks. This is what he wrote:
?For any single thing of importance, there are multiple reasons.?
The reason I?m so glad to have read this phrase?and his subsequent explanation?is that I get particularly frustrated when anyone, whether it be groups or individuals, try to oversimplify the reasons why … of anythinJust recently I started reading ?In Search of Stones: A Pilgrimage of Faith, Reason and Discovery,? by Dr. M. Scott Peck, and he noted something early on that stopped me in my tracks. This is what he wrote:
?For any single thing of importance, there are multiple reasons.?
The reason I?m so glad to have read this phrase?and his subsequent explanation?is that I get particularly frustrated when anyone, whether it be groups or individuals, try to oversimplify the reasons why … of anything. (To be fair, I?m not immune to this type of thinking either. But it still frustrates me.)
On a very basic level, why am I a Yankees fan instead of a Mets fan (like that could ever happen?). Well, my dad was a Yankee fan, so that?s a pretty logical start, and the Yankees had a lot of exciting players?Reggie, Guidry, Catfish, Thurman, Willie Randolph, The Goose?and were back to their winning ways? But why did I even like baseball in the first place? Why did I like sports? Not all kids do.
Besides, I became an Islanders fan even though my dad was a Rangers fan. Why? Not sure. I remember liking the Islanders? home jerseys and I liked that they were a new franchise. Their inaugural season was 1972 and I was born in 1971, so I felt a bond with them. And was I rebelling against my dad in some way? I think that might have had something to do with it. But by the early ?80s I had grown tired of hockey overall and stopped watching it all together.
And yet I?m as much a Yankees fan now as I ever was. Why? Again, not sure. But this is how I am.
This extends to all elements of our personalities, and of events big and small. On a simplistic level, I could say that I met my wife through online dating. And that?s true. But how we actually met is far more complex and interesting than that (it?s a story for another day; but one definitely worth telling, and I will).
Another happening from my own life is: how did I come to write Finders Keepers? Indeed, it is based on a backpacking trip I took through Europe. But why did I choose to write a novel about it? Why do I write at all? Why did I go to Europe in the first place and how did that come to pass? And when I was there, why did I make every little decision that I did in just the ways and sequence that I did, which led to future decisions?
And on and on.
Though not a phrase coined by me, I find that it nevertheless is a universal truism: the more I know, the more I know that I don?t know. Which actually piques my curiosity. I have developed this sometimes unquenchable thirst to discover the mysteries of the cosmos. Believe me when I say I wasn?t always like this. I used to be exactly the opposite.
As a child, and even as a younger man, I was terribly introverted in my thoughts?even if I was often loud, brash, outspoken … and annoying. But now I?m intrigued by others. But what they do, how they act, what they think. And I spend a good deal of my time trying to figure out how best to navigate my own life while other people are doing the same. I?m fascinated by the fabric of the universe, how the random maybe isn?t so random, how coincidence maybe isn?t coincidence at all.
And how our struggles, frustrations and disappointments can be amazing opportunities to learn, if only I can pull myself out of my grief and self-absorption long enough to realize that I?m given chance after chance after chance to grow as person.
Getting back to my original thought, then, why do I think this way now? I don?t know. I just know that I [i]do[/i] think this way. And why didn?t I think this way before? I have some idea, but ultimately, I don?t know that either. It?s just the way I was.
I think to some degree we all want the cosmos and all the pieces in it to be easily digestible and easy to comprehend, so we try to trim life down to its simplest terms, even though doing so can have us viewing the life we live with a very narrow view. We all want quick and easy answers. We want our days to be fruitful and without struggle. And we want them to be as simple as possible. Even here I?m oversimplifying. Of course I don?t think everyone takes a simplistic view of the world around them or at all moments. But it?s undeniably a part of culture, and in my opinion, not for the better.
Without complexity, without nuance and layers, we would be as stiff and lifeless as bad TV. No one happenstance, no one event, makes us who and how we are. We are a melding of experience, biology and the elements and mysteries still unknown to us.
As Dr. Peck says:
?For any single thing of importance, there are multiple reasons.?
We are a cluster. And that fascinates me.
