Handel’s Sarabande is a relatively simple tune. But, Oh! It can build to quite some power. Repetitive throughout, the work is a version of a Spanish dance, a zarabanda. Whether played by orchestras or individuals, Sarabande is a methodical piece: We know what’s coming as we hear it, even when it’s played on an electric guitar. We can anticipate its build-up to power, and maybe our ability to know the organization of the piece is what endears it to us. For its short duration, Sarabande provides us with unity, coherence, and emphasis.  

Many lives are quiet and repetitive throughout. They are exemplary of unity and coherence, but they lack emphasis. Some lives never build too much power for various reasons: Interrupted plans, tragedies, self-imposed restraints. But no life has to be lived without building to quite some power and inspiration.   

Quiet repetition makes abrupt power more dramatic, of course. You can build your life on contrast. No tune is an analog to your life. That might be what underlies your liking several different kinds of music. Even complex symphonies fail to mimic you—and symphonies are known for their contrasting movements and underlying repetitive themes. Would playing all the music simultaneously be more imitative of your life?

Sometimes you are all percussion. Sometimes, all strings. Then brass. Woodwinds. Making a harmonious and unified sound is relatively rare. Cacophony is your destiny: all the sounds of all the instruments and all the movements of all the symphonies playing simultaneously. As a conductor, you are in and out of control: Strings are playing Vivaldi, brass are playing Saint-Saëns, woodwinds are playing Gershwin, and the percussion, well, they are playing a mix of Mazur and Abe. Yes, as a conductor, you long for an orchestra harmoniously playing a simple tune under your control, but…Now someone named Tchaikovsky in the pit thinks that firing cannon makes music.

What do you do to keep the musicians in check? What song would you like to conduct and hear? How temporary is the desire to hear that particular song? Cacophony is your tune. Yes. Cacophony.

An alien sees a planet with water, assumes it houses life, and lands in your backyard. Then the alien, approaching you as you drink your morning coffee on the patio, says in your language, “Take me to your leader.”

Taking a sip of the coffee while it is still hot, you, as a native Earthling, say, “I don’t have one. I am my own leader.”

Would you say that? Really? I hope so, but in what context would you proclaim to be self-led? You are, as you must surely realize, a product of inculcations beyond your ability to recognize or count: Influences from crib to current age both subtle and overt.

Listen today to the voices of your fellow Earthlings. Many around you proclaim their “individuality.” What do we Earthlings mean when we say we are individuals? What constitutes the individuality we seem to cherish and defend with our mental, emotional, and physical tools? Once defined, does that individuality ever succumb to disintegration, to dissolving like sugar in hot coffee? Are there people who are not “individuals”? What’s that you say? Yes? But you are different, right?

If you recognize in others a “dissolving like sugar in hot coffee,” can you recognize in yourself that same process, an absence of individuality in a solution of society? No? Not even a little dissolution? Be honest here.

When you try to pin down your exact individuality, you run into some difficulty and maybe into some frustration. Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you; rather, I was just posing the question asked by a hypothetical alien. “To what degree would you insist, “I am my own leader”? Regardless of what you thought before you started to read this, that self-leadership is not 100% YOU, and you, living on a water planet where substances dissolve, are not a dry lump of sugar in an arid land. There’s hot coffee all around.

Chances are that no alien will approach you to ask for directions to your leader. Just forget that I ever mentioned this. Enjoy your coffee—with sugar. 

Who was the first person to eat taro (Colocasia esculenta)? If you don’t cook the stuff, you risk throat, mouth, and esophagus irritation from calcium oxalate crystals in the plant. Who was the second person to eat taro after he or she saw what it did to the first person?

Was the second consumption of taro a conscious act? Centuries ago, was the second taro-eater a Polynesian “scientist” who said, “Maybe if we cook this stuff….” And then who thought to put the stuff on the skin to heal insect bites or to ingest the stuff to relieve stomach ailments?

Modern Hawaiians consume a bunch of taro, but less than they did fifty years ago. Known as kalo (and by many other names), taro is rich in vitamins, starch, and even amino acids. The stuff appears to be good for people; we know that now. But back to the original question: Who in Polynesia was that first eater? Did he or she eat on a dare? “Hey, Leiko, bet you a pineapple that you can’t eat that plant. Aulii, come see what Leiko is going to do.”

Dopamine. Could Leiko have eaten the kalo just for the dopamine flooding that results from taking a risk? She could not have known about the calcium oxalate crystals, so her taking the dare was definitely risky. Obviously, she survived, and subsequently, the Polynesians carried Colocasia esculenta to Hawaii, where it became an important part of the diet.

Jacques Garmerin, parachuting from a balloon. Wright Brothers, flying a heavier-than-air vehicle. Chuck Yeager, breaking the sound barrier. Leiko (or whoever), eating kalo. Not everyone can be the “first.” Take a moment to consider how many “firsts” there have been so that you don’t have to take a risk.

It’s a dangerous planet with all its organisms, both plant and animal, having both offensive and defensive mechanisms built into their very nature. It’s a dangerous planet with gravity directing everything downward at 9.8 meters per second squared. Calcium oxalate crystals are relatively minor nuisances in the grand scheme of things; nevertheless, the first taro-eater had no way of knowing the degree of risk. Was the first eating of that plant a gutsy or dumb action?

How do you assess the risks you take or avoid? Do you reason? Do you guess? Do you think of the consequences? Do you hope to wash your brain in a flood of dopamine?   

I don’t know what might have been. I will never know. I made a decision. There was a result and a consequence. I have no power to change either the result or the consequence. Time’s arrow goes in one direction.

Regret means I believe I could have made a different decision. Okay, if that is true, stop reading this. I mean it.  Now!

What happened? Whoa! You’re still reading, still stuck with a decision you made to continue. You will never know what might have happened had you stopped. You can postulate “something.” What? A different outcome? Some wonderful alternative “now.”

Regret seems to be tied to an assumed control, a mastery of the now that includes an infallible foresight. You don’t have it. No one really does. You can’t change the swing of a golf club afterward. You can’t choose to slightly alter the angle of your head after the head-shot (header in British soccer). You can’t redo the faulty transfer of calculations that led to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter and $327 million because the spacecraft didn’t hit its target altitude over the Red Planet (One group used English units, but another used metric units of measure for maneuvers. Suffice it to say that the use of two different measures led to the faraway destruction of the spacecraft). You can’t throw a curveball after you already threw a fastball to the batter who hit the homerun. Time’s arrow, you know, goes in one direction. You can’t hit a target that is no longer there, and the past is the absence of a target.

Regret looks back. Re, derived from Latin, in any word means “back” or “again.” Recall, recur, remember, redo, re-whatever. The etymology of regret is a bit sketchy, but it does combine re with, most likely, a word for “weep,” “bewail,” “moan.”

Now think. If you weep, bewail, or moan, what will you change? What could you have done differently you didn’t do differently? Enough bewailing! The $327 million is gone with the failed Martian orbiter. True, that’s a big mistake for NASA guys who are supposed to be smart. Goodbye, years of planning, calculating, building, launching, watching in anticipation—all gone in a simple failure to use consistent units of measure. It was a simple mistake, definitely, but with all their science and all their computers NASA scientists can’t kill that mistake with time’s arrow, a projectile more powerful than the Orbiter’s launch vehicle. Same for the slice or hook on the golf course. Same for the head-shot on the soccer field. Same for the pitch in baseball. Hit the target in front of you. You get one shot. The prize is more targets, each a consequence of your aim on the previous shot. Just make sure you know the unit of measure when you sight your next target.  

How could we test the hypothesis that fish fear fire? Fish live in a fire-free zone. Sure, there’s the true story of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. Remember? It caught fire more than once. For the sake of this inquiry, let’s assume we’re talking about the normal fish environment of fresh or saltwater, not flammable pollutants afloat on the Cuyahoga. Fish live in a fire-free place. “In case of fire, break glass” is an unnecessary instruction under water (barring some welder’s torch, some chemical tricks with Group I elements like sodium and potassium, or the eruption of lava from an undersea volcano).

To test whether or not fish fear fire we could take fish out of water and put them near a fire to see how they respond; however, their response might be a reaction to suffocating rather than to the proximity of fire. We could try submerging a welder’s torch to see whether or not it invokes some fear, but the noise and light might be the elements to which the fish respond. It’s tough to demonstrate that fish fear fire, that they have an instinct guiding them, that there’s a gene in there that says, “Don’t touch the stove.” By their biting hooks, fish seem to demonstrate an inability to learn a life-sustaining lesson. After thousands of years of being fished out of the water by humans and predators like bears, fish still bite the hook or swim where terrestrial animals can catch them. So, even thousands of years of exposure to fire would not guarantee that fish would develop a fear of fire. We’re still stuck without a way to demonstrate a “natural” fear even if fish acquire one. Maybe you can think of a way to test the hypothesis that fish fear fire.

Fire, occurring both naturally and artificially, is a common occurrence on land, Because animals have occupied terrestrial environments for hundreds of millions of years, they have had plenty of time for the fear of fire to work its way into instinct. And we can test whether or not animals like horses and elephants fear fire. But no need. Maybe not you, but others have witnessed the effect of a fire on horse psyche.

All right, we don’t have to tell horses to fear fire. Yet, we know that we have to tell little kids to avoid the hot stove. Strange, isn’t it? Big, complex brain needs a lesson, whereas little, simple brain seems to respond appropriately—unless that brain is housed in a fish. We do know from experience that humans can learn to fear some things that harm them. Although there appears to be no human instinct that keeps us from touching it the first time, touching a fire just once seems to prevent us from reaching for it a second time. Afterward, seeing an encroaching fire does elicit in us a fear of being burned.

Would it enhance our species if we were a bit more naturally afraid of the other things that hurt us? No more taking dumb chances with personal existence by trying to jump over a moving car, by attempting to leap from a roof into a swimming pool, by ingesting things that negatively affect the body, by fighting!

Maybe there’s something of the fish still left in our evolutionary development: A lack of instinct embedded in a species’ historical experience coupled with a lack of personal experience seems to add in human toddlers to a lack of an appropriate response to fire. Apparently, there’s also a bit of fish in our failure to respond to other dangers.

We live in an ocean of life where fire can occur. In self-destructive acts devised in big brains, we can actually choose to light that ocean on fire. So, I guess our species will continue to find ways to demonstrate that we don’t fear fire in all its forms and corollary dangers naturally: Ways like trying to jump over moving cars, trying to beat the train at the crossing, trying to burn our brains by injecting and ingesting potentially dangerous drugs, or trying to exert our will over others by war and violence that lead to some pretty bad burns.

Fish really don’t have a need to fear fire. Unless they’re hooked and cooked, they won’t experience it. We, by contrast, have a need not only to acquire a fear of fire, but also to acquire a fear of the other dangers posed by existence in the human ocean. 

Climbing the high mountains of Bhutan is forbidden by law. Legislation yields to local beliefs about the nature of the mountains and spirituality. So, don’t pack your gear for a trek up Gankar Puensum. Seek some other hill to climb.

What a shame. Just when we thought we were rational about what Earth is, just when we have a good understanding of how mountains form, just after we have devised the most sophisticated climbing equipment, somebody shuts the door on climbing a virtually unexplored region of the world. And for what purpose?

Here’s where it gets interesting. Why do we want to climb the un-surmounted mount? Is it only for science? Is it for thrills? Is it for pride so we can say, “Hey, I did that.” Is it for all these reasons and a few others? Could one of those reasons be spirituality? Obviously, someone thinks that way. Otherwise, Bhutan would not have the law against climbing for the reasons stated in the law.

Think of that law. We’re talking neither environmentalism nor extreme environmentalism. This isn’t a simple “Save the Mountains” movement. A government has prohibited some action to protect something that its people deem sacred. “Keep off the grass!” “Entrance prohibited!” So, there’s a place where place is more than location and more than a part of the environment in need of protection for its aesthetic beauty and organisms.   

And what do you hold sacred? What, according to your law, remains a place that you hold in reverence? You don’t have to be an animist to have such a place. You don’t have to be an environmentalist. You don’t even have to have a religion. But you do have to have some sense of “the spiritual,” a sense that outside of any practicality, any ethical sense, there is “something more.”

Your sacred ground doesn’t have to be justified as such because of any of its properties: remoteness, elevation, strangeness, mysteriousness, unique-ness. You don’t even have to articulate a reason or describe a feeling for its sacredness. You might have had an experience in the “place,” but not even experience is a necessary cause, argument, proof, or element.

Some people want to rid Earth of people. There are adherents of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Really. No joke. There’s a website you can look up. I assume they exempt themselves. Yes, they have a point. Human population is growing rapidly. But, if we get rid of people, what consciousness will be around to know that not only are there sacred places on Earth, but also Earth itself is sacred?

Nothing was sacred before there was consciousness. Before humans saw mountains there were other mountains that rose and fell. No consciousness was there to call them special. No consciousness posted “Keep Off” signs. Humans have added something to Earth that the planet did not have for billions of years: Sacredness. 

Many people would like to eliminate competition on the bases of sundry reasons and assumptions. So, there are some sports leagues for children that don’t keep score. What’s the point? Who cares? Just let them have fun. Miss a ball. It happens. No consequence.

Not that children go into sports caring about winning. At least, not at first. Adults do have a hand in fostering competitiveness. At least for a short time. Then, something happens that is unavoidable. Everyone enters the brackets of life—you know, brackets like those used in college basketball to pit teams against each other on the way to a national championship.

Brackets are unavoidable at some part in everyone’s life. Even a CEO is in a bracket of other CEOs. Of course, getting to the status of CEO was a matter of progressing through some kind of bracket, and that applies to self-starters, the entrepreneurs who forged their own business in a world of other businesses.

Unfortunately, brackets have final levels, and those levels limit the number of participants. In basketball, for example, just two teams vie in the final round for the championship. Fortunately, there’s no limit to bracketing. Didn’t make it to the final level in the bracket? You have options. Trying again is one. Another is entering a new bracket. Yet another is making an entirely new set of brackets on rules you devise.

There’s a championship out there waiting for you. Start drawing your brackets. 

Elephants have very thick skin. People don’t. Probably that is the reason that elephants don’t get upset when someone calls them heavy, says their noses are long, or their worldview limited. Well, that might not be entirely true. Although elephant skin can be as thick as 1.5 inches, elephants still feel something like a person’s hand or an insect. So, even this most thick-skinned creature can react to any affront to its integrity as an isolated individual.

Skin encapsulates us. Cultures do so, too. Seems that we’re always “inside something.” But what’s the alternative? Even blob-like amoebas have an outer membrane. Having no enclosing membrane definitely endangers the integrity of a living entity. Without an outer covering you would just ooze out of yourself on a cellular level. How would we recognize you, Puddle? Being enclosed is a necessity of identifiable life-forms. Otherwise, someone might say of another, “Her presence somehow made itself known at the party.” Or, “I would call him a peripatetic professor, but instead of walking as he talked, he simply enveloped the entire lab, and his lecture seem to emanate from everywhere in the room.”

As conscious beings, we also encapsulate ourselves mentally and emotionally. And we don’t take kindly to intrusions into our emotional space or mental constructs. We usually don’t find pleasure in someone’s breaching the walls of our mental membranes. Those ideas in there have to be protected, don’t they? That worldview has to be sheltered from penetrations by ideas that contradict beliefs and concepts.

Touchy, aren’t we? Maybe encapsulation is the only avenue for individual existence. Inventing an enclosing membrane was a necessary step for the formation of life, wasn’t it? All those organic molecules couldn’t do much if they could simply wander away from one another. “Hey, where are you amino acids going? We’re trying to organize here. Pay attention. Okay, everybody stay inside and line up by chemical bond type.”

It’s that way with how we think. Encapsulation. Put a membrane around our thoughts. Put one around our emotions, also. Encapsulated as a whole and in our parts. Every cell an independent, yet codependent entity brushing up against the next cell. Every thought an independent, yet codependent concept brushing up against our own diverse thoughts and the thoughts of others. Our emotions doing the same.

Skin. A conscious entity in an identifiable place, and no matter how thick the membrane is, we feel, like the largest land animal, the slightest touch as though it puts our integrity in jeopardy. After experiencing cuts both large and small, we know that our theoretical and emotional membranes, even those as thick as an elephant’s skin, are not impenetrable.

Find yourself searching? Looking for something, anything: Object, feeling, process? What do you really want?

You want what billions now and billions before you have wanted. You want a favorite song that keeps pleasing. You want a view that’s never tiring. You want euphoria that never fades. Good luck. It’s not going to happen.

Many before you have tried to find what they really wanted and have concluded that it’s the wanting itself that is an end. Wanting is ceaseless. Yes, it might have a pause now and then: A view from a height, a lightness in gait, an enveloping aroma, a …

Think for a moment about that moment. When was the last time the wanting stopped? You must realize that in “that moment” you still wanted. You wanted that moment to continue. You can’t seem to get away from wanting, even when you have temporarily reached your goal, acquired the object, felt the feeling, joined the process. 

Buddha, too. Seems that the Buddha wanted enlightenment though he also thought that desire was the cause of suffering. People have a lust for the want. So, they struggle. You struggle. Buddha must have struggled, bouncing between self-denial and want.

We define self by want as much as by any other trait or characteristic. It might be, in fact, a deeper, more telling property of self than any other. Want to know who you are? What do you really want? 

Porous rocks can hold liquids and gases. Permeable rocks are porous rocks with interconnected pores; in permeable rocks liquids and gases can migrate rather easily, being held in check only by pressure or some impermeable rock layer. Sandstones make relatively good permeable rocks; shales, or mudstones, usually don’t. Shales do, however, hold liquids and gases, and those resources can be tapped through a process called fracking, or fracturing, a process involving drillers forcing liquids under high pressure into the penetrated shale.

When a permeable rock layer is sandwiched between two impermeable rock layers the water stays in the permeable layer (stratum) unless one of several conditions occurs One of those conditions is, of course, a well drilled into the water-containing rock. Another is the cross-cutting of the permeable layer by the eroded side of a hill where a landslide, water, ice, or humans have exposed the permeable layer. The layer sits, therefore, with an exposed end through which the water migrates and flows onto the surface of the hillside. The water “springs” forth.

Some humans are like porous rocks. They have feelings, but they keep them the way shale holds water, petroleum, and gas. It requires some fracturing of the rock to allow the feelings to escape onto the surface. Fracturing, whether natural or artificial, is a relatively violent process bordering on catastrophic in some instances. The containing rock must be broken by injected, pressurized fluids.

Other humans are like permeable rocks. There’s a mix of feelings flowing freely and coming to the surface wherever there is an opening, either artificial or natural. Fracturing is unnecessary. Slow exposure of a permeable rock layer or direct drilling into the permeable layer will suffice to bring the resource to the surface.

Are you porous but not permeable? Do your emotions emerge only after fracking? Or, are you permeable? Just asking before I set up the drilling rig.