My Decision

While often fine at the time, well fed, housed, surrounded by friends and loved ones, relatively happy, I cannot help but think about the future, and feel pain and anger mostly at how such an intelligent being as ourselves can, in my view, be leading my offspring into such a pit of misery and disaster.  Of course, the future is nothing but conjecture, why be concerned with what might not happen? Why, if I am fine now, and if everything is well, am I so preoccupied with the future?  

What has happened to the snippets of eastern philosophy that I have encountered over the years – that all that really matters is the moment, and the individual's state of being now.  Why not live in the now? Why not enjoy the moment?  What difference will any of these preoccupations and external issues make to me now or when I die?  Can I not then relax and enjoy my passing away.....?  If at the time I go, I do so at the time of a catastrophe and am accompanied by many others (perhaps including my own children), should it matter?  Why should that make any difference?  Can they not then also enjoy the moment of passing away....  We are going to die anyway, why should it make a difference when and how at the moment it is actually happening?

These and many other questions flash through my mind.  The only answer I can give is that whether it is through my upbringing or it is in my true nature of being, I am preoccupied with these things, and feel there is not a lot I can do to ignore them.  

This being the case, do I continue thinking about them and do nothing else?  Often when I talk about them, I seem to get a sort of confused reaction from people, almost as if querying why I am so preoccupied about them.  So mostly ponder in silence.  

Why can I not still adopt the words of wisdom from eastern philosophy and, while still thinking about the things that preoccupy my mind, just smile and enjoy the moment?  I feel pain at seeing our world suffer – why?  There is happiness too in the world.  In whatever frame of mind I contemplate these things I conclude that the despair I feel is a combination of two pains. There is always one I can do nothing about, and one I can indeed do something to alleviate it.

If I choose a “hinduist/buddhist” philosophical perspective I can live the moment, smile, enjoy it, cease to preoccupy myself with anything else, and thus conquer my mind – and cure the pain.  Isn’t that the idea?  “We are all on a long cyclical journey, of which this life is on a part.”

But will I?  I know I will always be wondering “what if the moment is not paramount, despite all the arguments of why it should be so”.  There will be an element of doubt, which in the end will be my undoing.  While I may live the moment, not worry about anything else, returning questions will bring back the pain.  It will be a battle I can never win – unless I had “faith”.  But then I don't believe in faith.  I believe in questioning, and in doubt as much as faith.  For true faith to be present there has to be no questioning, or the questioning has to be second place to faith.  So in this case I may cure the pain of the moment at times, but the pain of what I perceive to be the future will always return.

So, I choose a more logical, scientific perspective.  In this case I allow myself to consider the future.  (As far as my basic knowledge is, this is a “no,no” in eastern philosophy except for amusement!)

I notice the pain I feel when I think about (what I perceive to be) our (probable) future. Why be concerned about what I cannot know will happen? I don’t know, but one reason is that during my life enough things I thought would happen have occurred (and plenty have not).  So I have chosen to do so.  I then conclude this feeling; this “concern of the future” is painful because until now, while thinking these thoughts, I have done nothing about them.  

While I might occasionally begin to talk about them, I usually soon cease, and I have never followed up with trying to write them down or express them better. So now I have decided to write about them!

I hope that this pain will become less chronic the moment I begin to communicate my thoughts coherently and even less so if I can follow these through with actions. Doing something is the best effective reaction to this.  While these concerns might not totally disappear, they may become less as I become active, as my energy is redirected where it seems my natural state deems is right.  Meanwhile things will happen around me of which I can do nothing about, and while I may react to these with sadness and sometimes despair, I hope I feel some comfort in my actions.

As I re-read these passages they seem to me almost a continuous train of thought, spinning from one theme to another. So, in order to make this letter coherent and have its beginning and end, I have thought of a series of questions and will deal with them one at a time, attempting to answer them.  I consider these questions fundamental to helping me filter through the myriad of related topics relevant to understanding our world today, and Man's role in it.  I hope this leads through a logical train of thought and then guides me to a conclusion – either in ideas or perhaps also in a series of actions as a result.  Perhaps others can help me, or join the search?

“Maswali” in Swahili means questions.

Introduction

Walking from Gate 3 to Gate 24 at a modern western airport terminal, sitting in a bus, watching a barefoot hawker sell his mini packets of peanuts in Africa, reading the news, stimulates my mind to a myriad and changing slew of questions and answers – such as:

Who are we?

What do people believe? Why do they believe what they believe?

Why are things the way they are? (Why is oil so important in today’s world?  Why do wars happen?  Why is religion so important?  Why do diseases like bird flu appear out of the blue?  Why do we need passports and visas to travel? Why is Africa poor and America rich?  Why are there billionaires and people starving? Why are we so successful that we have become the most widely distributed species of land mammal on the planet? )

Is this inevitable?  Do we have an effect on these things?  Is our destiny fate or are we in the game of life where our own actions can effect how the outcome materialises?