I Have This Notion…

Ron-Snowpack-Sierra-01… that each of us has at least one talent, an inborn way that, if we were living 10,000 years ago, would be of specific value to the clan or group of cavemen we belong to. I have read that our physical bodies are no different from those we had 10,000 years ago; that we were then just as human as we are now.

So what was I 10,000 year ago? I was not a hunter. I know a hunter, my oldest son Greg. He can make a bow and an arrow, can shoot a gun and release an arrow with a sure and steady hand. He can send a fly from a rod to the place where the fish will bite. He can steer a tugboat pushing a fuel and supply-laden barge through heavy seas in the waters surrounding Alaska. I do not have these talents.

I am a talker, an explainer of things, but I am not sure of what specific use this may be to the clan.

I do know where I am most of the time. I usually know where north is. I can hike an area I haven’t seen in ten years and remember key landmarks. I can find my out when lost, by looking at the lie of the land and imagine how the hills and valleys and creeks and streams relate to each other.

So, I will say I am a scout and a tracker. And a talker.

What are you, 10,000 years ago?

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The Purpose of Life is …

… to Live!

Alan Watts by Norm Breyfogle

This has been verified, once again, through my listening to Alan Watts, may he RIP, while I exercised on a machine that emulates cross-country skiing—something I haven’t done, other than on the machine, that is.

Watts verifies the above bold assertion, one I originally made upon deep reflection when I was in my early 20s. This was a period of great inner searching while I was also studying scientific and other things at the U. of Cal. at Berkeley, working at various short-term and part-time jobs, reading voraciously as still is my way, getting used to being married but without children yet, and occasionally getting soused on cheap wine with my wife and friends. This was also a time when we were not sure if the world would survive an argument between the USSR and the USA (in the persons of Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy) over nuclear missiles in Cuba.

I had bought two DVDs of Watts’s lectures and other materials and was listening to one of them to offset the boredom I suffer on the exercise machine.

Carl Gustav Jung

I listened to Watts talk on C.G. Jung, one of his mentors, and about another great man of learning and wisdom, G.K. Chesterton. During this exercising and listening session, and during a previous session as I listened to Watts lecture on “What is Reality,” I was reminded about Life being that which we experience every moment, unless we tend, mentally or otherwise, to live in the past or future.

So today is a beautiful day to live in the moment, given that Spring has sprung in Stockholm and it is a wonderfully warm day. My wife’s daughter, Liv, and I will take a walk along the lake next to our apartment building in the remaining daylight, of which there is plenty at 4:30 PM at this latitude (59 degrees north).

Life is good.

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