What if we never lost our child-like wonder?
What if we really knew our purpose?
What if we are living in a computer simulation and nothing is real?
What if we found out that most everything we believe to be true is really not?
What if the world is destroyed by some cataclysmic event, man-made or natural?
What if we discovered fear is the most effective motivation and fear is (most often falsely) manufactured by those who don’t have our best interests in mind?
What if we really knew how this incredible dirt suit the Creator encased our souls in for the time we spent on Earth really worked?
What if Earth isn’t the only place in the universe that supports intelligent life?
What if we really are eternal souls reincarnating over and over and over again?
There are hundreds of questions I could ask here, many of which would sound to most readers like I’ve lost my marbles. But the truth is that I am an intensely curious person. I want to know how and why most things work. So, I’m asking questions like those above.
For most of my life, I learned things from school, parents, church, and culture and simply accepted them as truth. I marched to the same drum as others in my little world bubble. Generally, most of us grow up in a very homogeneous environment. We think we know what’s going on and how the world works. We learn to function in that world, fit into that world, believe we know all there is to know in that world. Questions like the ones above rarely occur to us. It’s the old adage that we don’t even know what questions to ask.
Then many of us venture outside that little world bubble we grew up in and are amazed at the things we never heard of, saw, knew existed. That bubble we exist in gets larger and more complicated, more exciting, and yes, often scarier. The ways of the bigger world are different than the ways of our growing-up world.
I remember the first time I was introduced to tacos. It was certainly after I was 18 and had left my hometown. It was a surprise to me that meals weren’t required to consist of a meat, potatoes, and a vegetable. What if I could just eat an apple and cheese for dinner?
I also remember that the only prejudice I developed in childhood was against non-Catholics. There was no racial prejudice. I didn’t personally know anyone who wasn’t a European heritage Caucasian until I was a young adult. No one talked about their sexual preferences so there was no reason to judge those, and in my middle class, midwestern hometown of 30,000 people, there was little income disparity so no class prejudice either.
It wasn’t until Randy and I were married a few years and he rejoined the Air Force where I really was awakened to a much broader, different world than the one I’d grown up in. Still though, we were busy making a life. Full-time jobs in another homogeneous environment (the United States Air Force) kept us too busy to question some of the things we encountered in this broader, different existence. Learning new things was interesting and adventurous, but we still took everything at face value. We simply believed what we were told by new authority figures, like ministers, TV anchorpeople, famous people (no matter how or why they were famous), bosses, and government officials at all levels.
During the “Trust But Verify” years of Ronald Reagan, which just happened to coincide with the “invention” of the world wide web, we started to research and confirm some of the things we were being told. We began to learn that while some things were substantially true, often what we were led to believe was just that, LEADING us to conclude something it was convenient for “them” to have us believe. We did believe it, still too busy making a life to do much digging for truth and accuracy, or even the other side of the story.
You all probably remember Paul Harvey’s The Rest of the Story. It premiered in 1976 as a radio series and was wildly popular. During the trust but verify years it was instrumental in helping me remember that there’s ALWAYS another side to a story. Having taken journalism classes I (slowly) learned to ask, what are they not telling us about this? Why would this have happened in this way? Why would they present this information in this way? What’s in it for them? What do they want us to do, think, believe about this? What if there was information held back about this situation that would change how we react to it?
It took most of my adult working years to develop those habits. But it wasn’t until I was retired, had all the knowledge of the universe at my fingertips (though the internet), and plenty of time to research things, that I really began to question what I think I know.
And, as I’ve said often on this blog, the more I know I don’t know, the more I know I don’t know.
Now, I am an avid “What if” questioner. And nothing, absolutely nothing, is off the table for me to consider. Even things I know I’ll never definitively know the answer to. Bu I want to know as much as I can so I am able to draw my own conclusions.
There are three main areas that have captured my attention in the past few years. I’ll write about them in my long posts over the next three weeks.
First is the corruption of our government. I am convinced that for the most part, the concept of truth, justice and the American way has been perverted beyond recognition. This is not political in that one party or another is to blame. Corruption is a human condition that has wormed its way into governments of all levels in the United States of America.
Second is the motivations of the medical, pharmaceutical, and food industries. God made the human body to function and heal itself. The pursuit of money in these industries has destroyed our body’s ability to keep itself relatively healthy during the time it is alive on Earth.
And third, is the eternal nature of our souls. Raised Catholic, and having been a Christian all my life, I believe our souls are eternal. But the Bible is vague on where those souls are, and what they do, after our earthly bodies are done and gone. Different denominations believe different things. Can we really know?
I realize that my “what if” questions and the upcoming topics for this blog may jar some of you. Though I try to avoid controversy, the three issues I mentioned above affect the entirety of my daily life these days. And it’s time I confront them head on. You’re welcome to come along.
P.S. Randy and I are leaving on our Epic 50th Anniversary Grand Adventure Road trip in about a month. After the next 3 Tuesday posts I mentioned above this blog will become, for the time we’re on the road, a travelogue of sorts. I’ll post on an irregular schedule over the next 8-12 weeks what I think you might be interested in as we celebrate our 50 years of (mostly) blissful marriage.
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