You have to have breaks in life no matter who you are you get overwhelmed by things when you have no time to take a breath because the human brain and body need time to recycle just as the ATP molecule needs time to recycle to supply energy to the body this is not a sign of weakness it is part of the animal world and if you could run without breaks there would be no need to sleep but everyone sleeps lack of sleep causes people to undergo personality changes that breaks are truly necessary is demonstrated by the way we provide the same kind of relief in writing by the use of punctuation to give the reader a break for meaning and this thought I just wrote leads me to say that meaning itself is isolated and that is the reason that we never have the answers to the big questions so we break the meaning of the universe and the meaning of life into little thought units that we can handle an example would be the standard equation that tries to unite all forces and particles to show how the universe works and the equation is a good one except it cannot include gravity and similar philosophical questions such as why there is evil and suffering in the world and why there is time or truth or reality and well you name it because we cannot get to the whole unless we interject faith of some kind the best advice I can give is to be happy solving the little problems the bits of units that are bookended by breaks to enable you to recycle get renewed energy and ask the same questions again to get slightly different answers at least answers that are slightly different from the answers that your ancestors got when they asked the same questions.

Five hundred years ago the Moghul emperor, Jahangir, returned one of the gifts that Sir Thomas Roe gave him. It was a globe. The emperor had never seen one before, but after he understood what it was, he refused to accept it. Why?

Emperor Jahangir: “What is this round thing, young Englishman?”

Roe: “Your Excellency, it is called a globe. It is a map of the world that takes the shape we now know it has. I have even consulted this map to find my way from England to your empire.”

Emperor Jahangir: “Are you saying that this is a map that shows all the world?”

Roe: “Yes, Excellency. You can see where my country is. This is the island we call England. And here is the land on which you live. Here is the land of your sometime enemy, Portugal. It lies here (pointing) and across this ocean on another continent.”

Emperor Jahangir: “What are these other places?”

Roe: “They are other countries and empires, my Lord. Some of the places are as yet unknown by the cartographers. There might actually be many unknown places, countries, and empires.”

Emperor Jahangir (pointing to India): “Are you telling me that my empire is only this small part of the world?”

Roe (stammering): “Uh. My Lord, you have a rather large empire. It covers much of India.”

Emperor Jahangir: “Take back this gift. I do not want it. I am the ruler of a great empire. I rule the world.”

What’s it like to find out that there are others out there who also think of themselves as “ruler of the world”? What’s it like to find out that the things that are important to you are unimportant to others? What’s it like to find out that you are not the center of the universe?

There’s a well-meaning Sir Thomas Roe who comes into everyone’s life. He carries gifts.

You are mostly water, and the planet’s surface on which you live is covered mostly by water. Water being. Water world. Aren’t you glad humans discovered certain shapes and certain substances float? Eureka! Thank you, Archimedes for the principle of buoyancy. And now comes a new discovery: Floating metal foam developed by Deep Springs Technology and the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering has a density of only 0.92 grams per cubic centimeter (see Harish Anantharaman, Vasanth Chakravarthy Shunmugasamy, Oliver M. Strbik, Nikhil Gupta, Kyu Cho. Dynamic properties of silicon carbide hollow particle filled magnesium alloy (AZ91D) matrix syntactic foams. International Journal of Impact Engineering, 2015; DOI: 10.1016/j.ijimpeng.2015.04.008).

Ho-hum. Not another one of those tech stories that means little to the average person. Not another “popular science” story. Yawn.

But just a minute. This new metal foam stuff is really strong and durable. And think of the consequences of having a boat made from such a metal. “Go ahead! Put a hole in the bottom. It ain’t going to sink.” On a water world, a guarantee of floating is a pretty good thing.

Okay, I know you’re going to say you will never have need of a boat. You don’t plan to go sailing, cruising, speed racing, or floating on a river, lake, or ocean. Unsinkable is meaningless to you. But the idea of an unsinkable boat is not totally irrelevant to your life.

A good deal of who you are is a sea of feeling, a fluid set of emotions, and, if it is judged by all the road rage, inflamed arguing, and even riots, the society in which you live is also liquid. You are afloat in an ocean of emotions, some good and healthful and some bad and unhealthful. At times you are inundated by emotions: yours and those of others; you fear capsizing.

You have a need to float, and that need becomes more significant when emotions are strong. Having an unsinkable boat would be quite beneficial, wouldn’t it? Now, all you need to do is to get the inventors to make such a vessel. Or, you need to invent one for your personal use. Just you and the alloy that is buoyant enough to stay on top of the stuff that dominates your world. With such a boat you would never drown in sorrow or sink in depression.    

When things are similar, we look for differences, and vice versa. It’s in our nature. We want to be "different," but not so different that we verge on strangeness that is either laughable or repulsive. We think our differences are a key strength of character. Hold on a moment. Let's think about this. 

For individuals, differences are boon and bane. Look in the real and figurative mirrors to see how you are similar to others. Then look at those you encounter to find your doppelganger. Probably bugs you a bit, doesn’t it? There you are, thinking about your special nature, your individuality, and there someone else is, a compilation of physical, emotional, and mental traits very similar to yours.

Of course, you are truly different if only in small details. The larger issue is that just as you find both joy and suffering in what you are, what you encounter, and what you do, there is someone out there who has a connection to your joy and suffering.

The connection doesn’t diminish what you are. Rather it should give you some perspective on what you might think is any personal end-of-the-world crisis.

No one is free from crisis. No one lives a life of uninterrupted smoothness. You and your several doppelgangers swim in a stream both calm and turbulent. When you hit the white water and bounce over the cataracts, look around. Maybe there’s a helping hand held out by someone who has experienced similar turbulence. Maybe you have that helping hand.  

In some limestone areas, rivers flow across the landscape and disappear into the ground. The entrance to a system of underground cavities is called a ponor. Think of it as a sinkhole with passageways connected to a cave system.

Ponors and sinkholes form when the roofs of limestone caves collapse, opening a passage to the surface. Chance flows of streams in the area result in “lost creeks” and “lost rivers.” The disappearing streams usually reemerge from some cave opening at a lower elevation, often where the underground flow becomes a tributary to a larger regional river.

Freud, Jung, and a number of a priori philosophers have argued for a mental process that is the antithesis of a “lost stream.” In their views, the rivers emerge as though the mental ponor is an opening through which the flow counters the pull of gravity. The mental stream originates in the cave and emerges to run on the surface.

Those who hold such a view are at least partially correct. The instinct of animals appears to be an example. Too young to learn from parents and relatives, young animals have instinctive behaviors that ensure survival by welling up. But the human ponor seems to work both ways. Water both emerges from the deep and enters from the surface, as we know from our dreams.

If you have never traveled over or lived in a limestone region, you are probably unfamiliar with the topography known as karst. Ponors and sinkholes make the surface rolling with bowl-shaped dips of sunken land and small hills where no cave roof has collapsed. It is through such a landscape that streams wend their way, sometimes avoiding and sometimes draining into the underground passageways.

Human mental topography mimics this landscape. The stream of consciousness appears to originate at the surface sometimes and at other times below ground. What comes out of the ground is a fluid that has circulated among the recesses of secret cavities, some of which date from before your time. What goes into the ponor of the mind is the stuff of your life, both real and virtual experience, both actual and false memories, both opinion and fact. Find the exit and entrance holes if you really want to understand who you are. Watch what comes out and goes in.  

From recent experiments with cosmic-ray-like radiation, we now know that a journey into deep space would be quite hazardous for our brains. Aren’t you happy you chose for your residence a planet with a thick, protective atmosphere that blocks much of the harmful radiation? In spite of our space technology and astronauts' occasional brief stays in space, we are still as bound to this planet as the ancients who could only guess at the nature of the night sky’s points of light.

Getting claustrophobic? You can’t leave this place. If you do, your brain will have holes punched in it by high-speed protons. By the time you arrive to explore Saturn’s moons, you might be too mentally impaired to make good decisions. Nope. You’re here to stay on cloister Earth where there’s risk, but relative safety. Unless…

Unless you signed up for the one-way trip to Mars. A surprising number of people want to go. Let’s see. Mars. Carbon dioxide atmosphere. Dust devils that merge to become planet-wide dust storms driven by high-speed winds that can last months. Ah! Mars. Possible water just below the surface. Some water ice but mostly carbon dioxide ice. Seasons just, or almost just, like Earth’s.

No, stay here in the cloister. The habit you wear is your connection to the planet. Aliens would recognize you as easily as you recognize Sister Mary Milk of Magnesia because of her clothing. You belong to this place. Your organs are all indicative of an Earth-dweller. Rarely threatened by meteorites, you don’t have a skull five inches thick to protect you from bolides. Rarely threatened by X-rays and cosmic rays, your mushy brain is protected by a thin skull beneath a thick atmosphere.

Every aspect of your life is conditioned by an evolution on Earth. You belong here. The walls of the cloister don’t entrap you. They complement what you are. Yes, the words claustrophobia and cloister originated from the Latin noun for a door bolt and the Latin verb for “close.” Yes, you are bolted in. Yes, the door is closed. However…

However, your mind is free to roam the universe even though your brain is locked in the cloister. You can go anywhere mentally. Brain has a sheltered place and wears an identifiable habit. Mind doesn’t.

Earthquakes are not unusual events on a planet with a shifting surface, so the April, 25, 2015, temblor in Nepal was just more of the same for Earth. Not so for the people of Kathmandu and local villages. More than 7,000 people died in the quake. For them and their loved ones, there was only one earthquake; it mattered. Occur where they might, earthquakes are always significant for those who live near the epicenter and suffer loss of property or loved ones. By destroying infrastructure, earthquakes also isolate survivors.  

Pulled from the Nepalese rubble of broken homes were two people on the opposite ends of the age spectrum: A baby and a 101-year-old man. Imagine. You just start your journey on this world, and you find yourself in a dark, musty place with no mother’s touch of comfort. Imagine. You have been around longer than all your friends, have survived diseases and accidents, and you find yourself in a dark, musty place with no human touch of comfort.

The baby’s temporary entombment might, except for its dryness, have been reminiscent of its recent home in a moist, warm womb. The old man’s entombment might have been reminiscent of the separation between him and all those who died along the way of his long life.

Survivors and aid workers saved both from their entrapment. Earthquakes seem to emphasize that we are gregarious as a species. Yes, there are some who choose isolation, both physical and social. Usually, the rest of the species looks on loners as a bit odd and potentially dangerous. Conscious withdrawal from the touch of comfort just doesn’t seem “human.” For the overtly gregarious, the idea of isolation or an entombment away from the comfort of others is disturbing at the least. The gregarious empathize with the isolated, the entombed. They rush to dig them out of their isolation regardless of their stage of life. A lonely place is not a human place.

We won’t keep track of the baby’s life. Residing in Nepal, the baby will live without a personal memory of the event except through the stories of elders who tell of the miraculous recovery. Possibly, down the road some as yet unborn reporter will cover the life of the infant who survived and retell the tale of the rescuers’ efforts. Maybe the baby will do something to change the world in some way. We might hear about the centenarian again when he dies. Regardless of his surviving the earthquake, he is, quite obviously, not destined to live many more years. When he dies, we will read a headline that says, “Centenarian Who Survived Earthquake Dies.” If such a story does appear, I hope it contains the following sentence: “His rescuers ignored the dangerous aftershocks to free him for a death among friends.”

Our finiteness is mitigated by our gregariousness. That we care—even for those who want to separate themselves from the rest of us—is a species-wide trait. That we watch intently as rescuers dig through earthquake rubble, open new shafts to free trapped miners, rush into burning apartment buildings, or sail to save the storm-tossed, is an indication that we are all connected, regardless of place, time, or age. 

Been to the beach? Gone into the water? Have you had the experience of going into the surf, playing around for 15 or 20 minutes, and then finding yourself a small distance from where you entered the water? What happened?

Typically, waves, which are generated by winds blowing across the ocean, refract or bend as they approach a beach. The bending isn’t always complete, but the appearance is that the waves approach the shore perpendicularly. In fact, there’s usually a slight angle. That angle is noticeable when you stand on the beach and watch the end of the wave, the swash, roll up onto the beach at an angle. It’s also visible when you watch the waves break right to left or left to right. It is this lateral break that enables surfers to ride waves.

The incomplete refraction of the waves moves beach sands and any object or person in the surf in a longshore current. The movement is called the longshore transport, and it’s highly effective because it moves hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of sediment along the Eastern Seaboard every year, and along some coasts around the world, it can move a million cubic meters per year. The sand you stand on at the beach one year is not the sand you stand on the next year.

Intellectually, we also find ourselves moving imperceptibly in a kind of longshore transport. Ideas come at us all the time. We pay attention to some, pay “half attention” to others, and pay no attention to the rest.. Those waves that catch only “half” our attention and those that we think we ignore work to move us without our knowing.

So, watch the polls. Should marijuana be legal? The longshore transport has shifted opinion. Should we fight foreign wars? The longshore transport has shifted opinion. Should we go into deeper debt? Should we abandon fossil fuels? Should we this, or that, or …

Imperceptibly, we move with the longshore current. We think we know where we entered the water, but after having immersed ourselves in the waves, we look up to find we are down beach from our entrance point. And we didn’t even know we were moving. 

You hear it played at weddings. It’s in the movies as a background for love or for contrasting emotion. Johann Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major” is a simple tune with no lyrics that resonates in elevators, spas, and homes. It appears to relax and simultaneously uplift. It appears to pump all the brain’s feel-good chemicals regardless of the arranger or individual or group performer. You can hear it played on a piano, by an orchestra, on an electric guitar, this last version a popular YouTube upbeat video with about 2,000,000 hits. There’s even a version played on a cell phone, also shown on YouTube.

However it’s played, “Canon in D Major” appears to make listeners feel good. The brain on Canon transcends place, time, and problems. In truth, it is a simple tune, and without percussion, might be classified as a passacaglia because its fourth part is played by basso continuo. Pachelbel wrote his music at a time when such a form was becoming popular. He was born in 1653, lived a relatively short life (d. 1706) and bounced around among different cities and jobs as musician, teacher, and composer. Having been rediscovered in the 1970s, his now famous piece became popular more than 200 years after his death. Would he be surprised at the numerous versions of his work? Maybe not. Improvisation was also popular among musicians of his time. Seemingly, every year someone else reinterprets the Canon, and there seems to be no end to its variations.

Why do we change? Why are we always playing variations on a theme? The ancient Greeks had an answer: Desire is part of the world’s makeup. Recall that the first three “gods” in Greek mythology were Gaia, Tartoros, and Eros, all three having sprung from Chaos. Think of Eros as something more than physical desire. Think of Eros as just plain desire, and then think of the implications. Desire leads to change. Change itself can become the object of desire. You are driven by Eros when you move the furniture, buy a new car while the old one still works, or add a spice to your food.

Revising old songs serves as an analog: We keep something of the underlying structure, but we personalize the version. We do the same with philosophy. We do the same with psychology. We do the same with our worldviews. Eros, not the Muses, composes our music. We will never stop making variations on a theme. It’s the fundamental makeup of the world; it’s the fundamental makeup of humans. 

Some old things just persist. Equisetum, for example, is an example of a “living fossil.” Commonly called horsetail, the plant’s ancestors were abundant more than 250 million years ago. Some of its predecessors, unlike their living counterpart, grew as tall as an oak tree.

There are other “living fossils.” The horseshoe crab (no relation to either the horsetail or horses, but related to spiders) has also been around in different forms for a very long time, about 450 million years, give or take a week. Then there is Latimeria, or the Coelacanth, a lobe-finned fish that has connections to those creatures that first emerged from the sea to occupy the land. This almost two-meter-long fish was thought to be extinct until some fishermen pulled one up from the deep.

It’s tough to stay around for a long time on a changing planet. Continents move, seafloors form, spread, and dive to destruction in the mantle, proportions of atmospheric components vary, and ocean chemistry changes. Surviving for millions of years is quite a feat for any group of organisms.

Humans have not been around for as long as horsetails, horseshoe crabs, or coelacanths, but we have a couple of hundred thousand years under our belts. In that time we have established another kind of fossil record that has its own “living fossils”: A set of understandings on how the world works. Our philosophical, psychological, and social ideas are, in fact, just more of the same, rebirths or rediscoveries in different times. Okay, there are slight variations on themes, but, like the horsetails, horseshoe crabs, and coelacanths, the underlying structures are remarkably similar to those of the ancestors. How different from our predecessors are we? In fact, we are intellectual fossils. Want a different society? Think things will be egalitarian? Want peace and prosperity to prevail? Want your perception of the world to reflect “truth”? Think you have a handle of the meaning of life? Look around. There appear to be a few “families” of thought, each having spawned half dozen or so genera of ideas and a limited number of idea species. Worldviews come and go. For every generation they seem new; for the ensuing generations they seem old. Some worldviews become ostensibly extinct until they are rediscovered like the Coelacanth in 1938.

Think of your worldview as an organism. What are its ancestors? How does its present structure differ from its predecessor forms? How is it the same? I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but you are a living fossil.