You are here.
Yes, here you are, dear reader, at this precise point of longitude X and latitude Y, in the state of Nevada, Western USA, Planet Earth, on the outskirts of the great Milky Way Galaxy.
Welcome.
This is your location in our dimension of space and also your present existence points in the time continuum of this universe which is in early January, 2024 per our Gregorian calendar.
It's good to meet up and cross paths with you again, share a moment and exchange a few thoughts.
And speaking of thoughts, you know how life may be going along well as we continue day to day in our regular routines.
But we may not have achieved all we had hoped and dreamed of when we were back in our young, carefree and idealistic days.
So rather than get to set in our ways and too resistant to change as we grow older, why not give it another shot to revitalize our hopes, dreams and expectations?
This idea came to me in the wee hours of the morning a couple of days ago.
It was about 3 AM when I got up, went to the bathroom, then went back to bed again. But sleep eluded me for some time. That's when I began to view from a new perspective my present situation and surrounding environment.
In the daytime hours, people scurry about heading to work, school, shopping and many other activities. Traffic motion, people in conversation, barking dogs in the distance and the occasional chimes of church bells: these are the sounds and activities of our everyday lives.
Night Time, however, is the opposite: silence, darkness and stillness.
The entire world around you have been put on pause and people one and all are in deep slumber.
Everyone has taken a timeout. They have temporarily stopped creating, continuing and reshaping our physical world. And when you look at it from this perspective, well it appears to somehow lose some of its solidity, density and appear less real.
It looks to me as though there could be a weak spot in the fabric of our universe and if you were to seek it out then you might find traces of it between 3 and 4 AM in the deep night darkness. That's where the concrete reality, comfortable permanence and validity of this world of ours seems to have its weakest point.
Beware though, if you start to explore this seemingly weak link in time and space, then you may well begin to question the who, what, when, where and origin of it all.
I know that at this point you may be thinking I'm close to touching the third rail of the outer limits and it could be a dangerous region in which to venture. But please let me try to illustrate and clarify my view. These thoughts after all came to me between dreamland states in the middle of the night and here, we are examining them in the light of day.
Science tells us that the solidity of all physical objects around us is but an illusion and that all material forms are composed of very minute particles in extremely rapid rotation around each other which only makes them seem to be in solid shape and form. An example would be the blades of a fan rotating so fast as to make it appear as a disk shape.
More than a theory, this is proven out to be fact with the use of high-powered microscopes as well as the creation of atomic energy.
However, we lay people still look at and see all physical objects in our environment, mountains, trees, clouds and ocean waves as real as can be. We even see beauty in them. For example, a woman looking in her mirror and putting on her makeup.
So, could it be that our world is real, solid, permanent and sometimes beautiful just because we say it is?
And because we all believe it is? And we co-create our mutual world on an ongoing basis with our community in a bond of agreement, trust and love.
Gratitude is the feeling I experience seeing human kindness, children's laughter and the beauty of nature all about with you and I and friends being part of it all.
On the other side of the coin, I have a friend who tells me she is a nihilist and believes in nothing. What a strange attitude. I was quite interested in this and we talked at length about her outlook in life. I won't call it her philosophy. It's more like an absence of philosophy.
Even though she was well educated, hers was a sad story. It was an empty and hollow shell of lack of reality, meaning and purpose.
There was a vacuum of faith, trust and real connection with life, living and those around her.
Could it be then that, not only our physical sphere, but life as we know it is real, special, meaningful and enjoyable being that we primarily make so?
Do our emotional connections, creation of joy in interacting with each other and our belief in its purpose and goals help form its structure of permanence? And is it all bound together with the glue of our love?
So, in getting back to my middle of the night drifting between dreams and fearing the world fading away: I would say not to worry. No need to fear the darkness and frailty of our world.
The bright morning sun will soon be popping over the eastern horizon as a new day dawn. Roosters will crow, little birds will sing. People will rise, stretch and begin another day.
Well, that's all I have to say here and now today about longitude, latitude, attitude and gratitude.
View more articles by Googling danhughoconnor@gmail.com