Three Notable Axioms

Recently I came across or to be precise, heard three notable axioms while watching one of my favorite shows. There is no need to mention which show here, and perhaps needless to add, the truisms are only notable on a personal level as based on my sum of life experiences and observations.

I shall avoid any exhaustive interpretation of each suffice to say, for mine they resonate as eternal truths, like if you will, being pertinent across the ages. I suggest that they be read with little expectation for it’s possible they will mean far less or, the opposite to you and broadly, other readers. 

1. Let me explain something to you that in your long life you have not yet had occasion to understand. Friendly relationships are dangerous, they lend themselves to ambiguities, misunderstandings and conflicts and always end badly, formal relations on the other hand are as clear as spring water, their rules are carved in stone, there is no risk of being misunderstood and they last forever … Where there are formal relationships there are rights and where there are rights the earth order reigns …
2. A man’s past sins are the very one’s he will commit in the future … because man is like God, he never changes …
3. I’m going to let you in on a secret, ever since I was little I’ve learned to confound people’s ideas about what is going on in my head ….

The first one, - and once again this is a personal interpretation – applies to professional relationships in the workplace, especially corporate where it is best to engage in rules based on rigid observance of internal culture, convention and/or etiquette.    

As for the second one, on a simple level it merely speaks of past behavior as a useful marker for future behavior, but I deduced a secondary connotation. Man has a dark and ominous underside, whether this reflects the archetypal male psyche is subject to much argument, still …

The third brings to bear the games we play as humans, the predictable interactions, the mind games that people engage in through a patterned and predictable set of transactions that always appear outwardly plausible to all present and involved but, which mostly conceal personal motivations.

Your views are most welcome …

The inescapable truth about dying

Is it one’s age, a recently read book, perhaps the passing of someone close, or a health scare. Since we are all on our own unique journey in life, it’s remains idiosyncratic how suddenly, something triggers thoughts associated with humanity and death hence, mortality. For some, such thoughts strike as if an epiphany of sorts as they get past the age of fifty or later, which is, I believe infantile, given that death, in one form or another, has always been around us, not just in the news but in family.

Personally, the thought of dying, while not uppermost in my mind, does present more often of late, this seems natural and probably due to my age. I felt silly when recently, upon thinking about the possibility of living to a ripe old age of 85 it occurred to me that, being nearly 56, I have completed almost 66% of my stint on this mortal plane. How egocentric on my part to even expect that I reach a minimum chosen age, any age past my present one for that matter. Who am I to dictate how old I must or, even hope to be upon dying, save for having an accident.

Mishaps aside, it occurs to me that there are two broad stages to dying or end of life process. The first stage begins the moment we are born, human life is finite even in the absence of disease, 80, 90, 100 years? It’s pure conjecture and depends on a host of lifestyle and/or genetic factors. The second stage represents society’s accepted characterization whereby a person is diagnosed with an illness and, following a period of unsuccessful treatments the term ‘terminal’ suddenly and chillingly enters the vocabulary. This stage may represent days, months or years.

Call me juvenile but it’s both these stages that from time to time, mess with my mind. My late father was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer at age 64 and died around 22 months later. That was in 2005 or 11 years ago, I was 45, fast forward to my current age and it suddenly occurs to me that if I only live to my father’s age I have around 10 years left. In sum, ill health when coupled with the finite nature of life, combine to give rise to my ruminations about impermanence in the context of being around those I love and in turn, love me.

The inevitable truth about dying is that it’s happening right now to you and me in some form or another, it is indolent but nonetheless occurring, and quantifiably so. The latter needs no scientific apparatus to validate, I only need look at old photographs for visual verification, or take note of the more frequent aches and pains that present.

Socrates suggested that death is really “a change or a migration of the soul from one place to another”, Mother Teresa would add, “but going home to God’, both of which are comforting. As the inevitable draws closer, it is becoming wholly apparent that living fully and embracing it all, the highs and lows, the exultations and the blows, is of fundamental importance to a life well lived regardless of time limitations. This may give us more than a clue to what Mark Twain meant when he said, “The fear of death follows from the fear of life … A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time”.

As an emotive being, I must confess that it is the aforesaid term, “finite” that every so often unsettles me. We’re all limited, we have a predictable and determinate lifespan in linear years that, in the grand scheme of things, represents no more than a miniscule fraction of time past, present and future. And there lies another juvenile conundrum, who am I to question what is unalterable, what has been set by a power greater than the sum of all of us. I have reservations about my finite existence, really, I moot in silent reflection, how laughable in view of its antonym, which just so happens to be, infinite. If my existence is not finite then it must be infinite, God must be laughing too.

As I considered my closing lines to this piece, I find myself intuitively taking solace in the knowledge that many of us do not deliberate on such foreboding thoughts until it they must, until something happens, until dying is thrust upon them, death and all its connotations not merely strikes close to, but nearly always pierces the heart, but then it’s oh so late.

I must live fully now, in all my present moments, it’s my raison d'etre and perhaps yours, Sapientia et Doctrina.

© 2017 Ottavio Marasco. All rights reserved.

Pale Blue Dot

Voyager 1, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and take one last photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of astronomer and author Carl Sagan.

Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of the Earth taken from the Voyager in 1990 from 6 billion kilometres away. 

This iconic image was taken at the request of famous astronomer, Carl Sagan, as the engineers took one last look at their home planet, which appeared as a tiny dot against the vastness of space.

Carl Sagan opened our eyes to the meaning of this image and life on earth: On that dot “every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives.”
Seen from about 6 billion kilometers, Earth appears as a tiny dot (the blueish-white speck approximately halfway down the brown band to the right) within the darkness of deep space. 
Now follow the Brainpickings.org link in the tweet below, play the video at the site and then reflect on what Sagan says:

Sapientia et Doctrina ... 

Carl Sagan's iconic "Pale Blue Dot," animated in motion graphics https://t.co/7pSbndYSOB pic.twitter.com/2BLr6kjm28

— Maria Popova (@brainpicker) 24September,2016

A Notable Personal Introspection

Considering I was, and have been in varying extents silly, immature, anxious, cruel, reckless and impatient, egotistical, unprofessional, incompetent, irrational and simply bad most often. I refer to the age of 15 - 25 and, to a lesser though still significant extent, between the age of 25 – 35, and again to a lesser but still significant extent, between the age of 35 – 45, and yet again, to a lesser extent from the age of 45 onward .... I am now fantastically successful in my mid fifties.

As I reflect on this, I also realize that at core, I always knew where the “off” button was, I knew when to draw the line, I knew how to maintain the fundamentals right, e.g. marrying the right girl, buying a home, keeping a job, keeping my financials in order etc. I also knew how to maintain appearances and create righteous facades. Nonetheless, this does not diminish the fact that I was, at times very irresponsible, and came too close to outright sabotage and yet, given where I am at this time, being August 2016, in totality I am fantastically successful, in spite of my past foolish idiosyncrasies.

The other realization is that the first paragraph reveals improvement as I grew older, and this is the inspiring feature of my being, better late than never, constant and never-ending improvement to become the man, person, and “individual” I am today.

I am tempted to list the acts that constitute the “foolish idiosyncrasies” to which I refer, however this may not be a worthwhile exercise, more to the point, I feel it would be self-defeating. 

One way to make amends is to continue growing, becoming better and ultimately more successful still...

Moments of Reflection

Travelling home on a train in moments of personal reflection, I wrote:

I am neither good nor bad; assuming I know what constitutes such. I am incomplete, can one be complete? Seems all is in a state of perpetual flux, searching amid moving ever-changing environs inside and out, not the I am lost, far from it. This I know, I know I am, I exist, I am energy of such volume as to constitute discernible matter, mass if you will. I am everything and nothing; I am past, present and future in any given earthly moment.

Could such thoughts, such introspection signal growth, maturity, wisdom?

Sapientia et Doctrina