Ned B. Johnson
Ó 1990, all rights reserved

All Hallows’ Eve; Halloween; All Saints’ Eve; to the Celts, the last day of the year, a festival for the dead; to early Christians, a night when witches and warlocks ranged abroad, a good night for a large bonfire; to modern children, costumes, candy and ghost stories. To Margaret Olsen, it was the night on which she surrendered her virginity to the quarterback from Northridge (whom she never saw again); the night when, in a drunken stupor, she agreed to marry Ronny Olsen; the day when she tearfully filed for divorce 6 years later (thus correcting at least one of her former Halloween follies, the other of which being much more difficult to rectify); the night when she was, as she often said, “accident prone,” in the spirit of the wealthy industrialist who bribed a ticket agent with an obscene sum of cash just to book passage on the Titanic. Had she the foresight to realize what this All Hallows’ Eve had in store for her, she would have almost certainly gone directly to bed; alone. Five-sight, however, would have insisted that she carry out her plans as best she could. Having no sight except that which her chocolate eyes provided, she innocently, albeit anxiously, proceeded to make ready for Sharon’s costume party, thus employing her five-sight through the proxy of her innocence, as was her custom.

Due to her usual month-end-tizzy, Margaret had forgotten to reserve her Halloween outfit and consequently walked into the costume shop right off the street and asked for a Cinderella ensemble. The clerk just laughed aloud, “Are you kidding, lady? The last one was booked in August.”

“Well, what do you have available?”

“About all we got left in your size are a couple of Old Hag costumes. You know, black dress, cape and pointy hat. You want one?”

“Does a mask come with it?”

“Used to, not any more. These babies have been out more times than Wilt Chamberlain,” he laughed, thinking himself clever, “But I can sell you a half-mask like this one,” pointing to the display, “for $9.95. You want it or not, lady? I got other customers waiting.”

She’d take the costume and the hag mask. “I guess half a hag is better than no hag at all,” she mumbled to herself as she pawed through her purse looking for some money. Several hyper-kinetic moments later, her right hand emerged holding a wallet decorated with lint, Kleenex confetti and a couple of trading stamps. She paid the clerk, grabbed her bag and left the store in something of a snit.

“Already it starts,” Margaret mumbled under her breath as she left the shop. “It’s only four o’clock and I’ve already started fouling up.” her heels dug into the sidewalk percussively as she walked the half-block to the parking lot.

Things did not improve on the way home. Between freeway snarls, a noisy and breathtakingly narrow escape from a fender-bender, and a gas gauge teetering on empty, Margaret’s mood was all but mortally wounded by the time she reached home. After hanging up her coat, her first act was to walk briskly and directly to the liquor cabinet and grab the first bottle she came to: 190 proof Everclear. “Can’t use this one,” she said to herself with some irritation. “Got to save the high-test stuff for the punch at the party tonight.” At least she had bought it before the stores ran out, she sighed. The next bottle was bourbon. She decided that would do just fine and poured a couple of ounces in a tumbler. After a brief debate, she opted to drop a couple of large ice cubes in with the whiskey. “Ahhh,” she groaned after her first slug of the potent brew. She felt better already.

She carried the drink out to the living room and collapsed on the couch. Downing another immodest swig of bourbon, she laid back her head and took a deep breath. It felt so good just to relax for a few minutes. She closed her eyes and thought about palm trees and blue lagoons, a relaxation technique she had heard was helpful. Margaret was pleased and a little surprised, a few minutes later when she realized how well it was working. She actually did feel relaxed and calm for the first time all day. In fact, she felt pretty good. She chuckled at herself for worrying so much about things: the costume, the traffic, the party. So what. It wasn’t like her life was threatened or anything. Come to think of it, everything she habitually worried about was really just small potatoes compared with the really big dangers: terminal disease, robbery, murder, rape. Immediately she regretted thinking about it. Disease, violent crime she could almost handle, but rape - the mere thought of it brought on an adrenaline rush, the kind that makes your knees tremble and gives you the pulse and respiration of a hamster.

The relaxation was gone now. It was replaced by an anxiety that was worse than she’d felt all day. “Terrific,” she growled at herself, “I finally get relaxed and I have to go and screw it up by thinking about the R-word.” She tried again to think of the tropical scene that had worked so well just a few minutes ago. No dice. This time the scene was dark and there were bumps and heavy breathing where nights aren’t supposed to have places. After a minute of that, Margaret sprang to her feet and looked for something to do quickly to get her mind off her fear.

The first thing she saw was the bag from the costumers. Since she really hadn’t taken a close look at her outfit in the shop, she decided that this would be a good time. If she needed to make any alterations, at least she still had time before the party. The costume looked as good on her as it would on any witch. The mask was actually quite good, too. It had huge, hairy brows and an even larger proboscis complete with warts and nasal hair. Really quite grotesque. The only problem was that it only covered her face from the mouth up. She would have to do something with her cheeks and jaw to make them fit with the mask or she’d look silly. She felt sure that she would find enough ways to look dumb at the party without bringing any along.

She wore the mask into the bathroom and, standing in from of the mirror, tried to imagine what kind of makeup she could use to best effect to integrate her smooth complexion with the grizzled caricature of the hag. Using mascara, eye-liner and several other arcane compounds, she began the transformation of her otherwise attractive face. When she had finished, she stood admiring her handiwork. It was actually quite good. Still, there seemed to be something missing. Suddenly she remembered the trick they used to gross each other out with when she was a kid. She went to her desk and retrieved a bottle of Rubber Cement. First she applied a strip of the cement to her left cheek. After it had dried, she pinched the flesh, creating a long crevice. When she let go, the gouge remained, held together by the cement. The scar thus produced looked positively disgusting and Margaret was delighted. Using the same technique, she added a few other blemishes at strategic points on her face and neck.

When she had finished, she was elated at the transformation. Returning to the living room, she admired herself in the wall mirror. She was amazed. Not only was she ugly and haggy but it was clear that she’d never see 90 again. Just to amplify the effect, she stooped over and walked around with a geriatric shuffle. The effect made her laugh. “Maybe my luck is changing,” she giggled, “Maybe getting stuck with this outfit was really serendipitous.” She began to practice cackling. As good as her costume was, it was well worth the effort to add a few finishing touches before the party.

Margaret spent over an hour perfecting her voice, witchy laugh, old hag walk and other mannerisms. When she finally noticed the clock, she realized that she was going to be late to the party. Ordinarily, she would have been happy to be fashionably tardy, but she had promised Sharon to bring the hi-test alcohol and help with the preparations. She reverted to her former frantic mode and rushed around for five minutes, gathering up the food, liquor and other props she was to bring with her. After one last look around to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, she was out the door and speeding down Highland Street toward Sharon’s. “Only 20 minutes late, not bad, Maggie,” she chided, “you just never have a broom when you really need one.”

Sharon’s apartment was in the newly renovated, upscale Dunbar neighborhood, less than a mile from the edge of Grayling which was still a borderline slum. Margaret always felt uneasy driving through Grayling, especially at night. Somehow, Halloween didn’t improve the ambiance of the area. It was, however, on the shortest and most direct route to the party and, being late already, she decided to go via Grayling anyway. She pushed the speed limit all the way and held her breath every time she ran a yellow light hoping there were no police in sight.

When she arrived at Sharon’s building, she was thrilled to see a car just pulling away from the curb, leaving a parking place near the front door. Maybe her luck was changing after all. She parallel parked perfectly on the first attempt. This pleased her even more. By the time she rang for Sharon to let her in, she was positively beaming.

As Sharon opened the door to the apartment, she blanched. Just for one brief moment, in the dim light from the hallway, she fell for the disguise - hook, line and cackle. When she caught her breath, she choked out, “Jesus, Maggie, you look great … I mean awful … well, you know what I mean. Where in the world did you get that outfit. It’s perfect.” Then, further regaining her composure, “Here, let me take that stuff for you.” Margaret handed over a large shopping bag containing her contributions to the festivities, all except the alcohol which was tucked safely in her purse.

None of the other guests had yet arrived which made Margaret feel a little better about being late. They worked quickly to set up the finger-food and spike the punch. Sharon, feeling responsible for the condition in which her guests left the party, insisted that they use only half the rocket-fuel. She said that if they needed to, they could always add more later. Margaret agreed and, after pouring half the bottle into a pint fruit jar, which she then replaced in her purse, she emptied the remainder of the bottle into the punch bowl. The two women tasted the heady mixture and agreed that it was every bit as good as last year’s.

Soon, other guests began to arrive. Some Margaret knew, others were associates of Sharon’s. It proved to be a good mix of friends and strangers. As the momentum of the party climbed toward full swing, Margaret forgot all the fears and frustrations of the day. It was a good party with good people and she was having the time of her life. She was, that is, until Franklin arrived — with a date.

She could hardly believe her eyes. After the way he had so unceremoniously dumped her less than two months ago, she hardly expected him to have the gall to show up at the party. And with a date, no less! At first she was stunned. Shock soon turned to hurt, pain to anger. She wanted nothing more than to hurt him back. In spades. Her imagination raced back and forth frantically searching for the means by which she could get even. Nothing suitable came up. Her next impulse was to disappear.

She walked swiftly to the back bedroom where she hid out for a quarter of an hour while she tried to figure out what to do. Sharon finally missed her and formed a search party of one to track her down. When she found her, she said, “Maggie, what are you doing in here?”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

“Franklin? I thought you knew he’d be here. Oh, God. I’m sorry, kid, if I’d known I’d have warned you. It must have been a terrible shock for you having him just show up like that. Look, I’ll just go ask them to leave right now. Okay?”

“No!” shouted Margaret, “not okay. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”

“What, then? Are you going to spend the rest of the evening hiding in here?”

“No.” Then after a long pause, “I think I’ll just leave myself. The party’s pretty much ruined for me now anyway. Actually, there is another party I sort of promised to go to later. I guess I’ll just drop in a little early to that one. Sort of make up for being late to yours.”

“Oh come on now, you don’t have to do that. This is as much your party as it is mine. I don’t want this to spoil Halloween for you. Please reconsider.”

“I don’t think so, Sharon. I had a wonderful time for the first couple of hours. Maybe I can do it again at the other party. There, at least, I’ll have a chance to. I doubt if I could resurrect any fun here. Thanks for asking, though. You’re a dear.” She was already adjusting her cape for the cool autumn night.

“Well, if you’re sure. Call me when you get there though, so I won’t worry. Alright?”

“Alright, if you insist,” promised Margaret, cracking a tentative smile. “Thanks for being so understanding, Sharon. This sort of thing is really quite normal for me on Halloween. Earlier, I thought this year was going to be different. Apparently that was a premature assessment.”

They both laughed and kissed each other on the cheek before Sharon left to rejoin the party. Margaret just grabbed her purse and quietly slipped out the front door and down to her car.

There was, of course, no other party to go to nor would she have been in the mood if there had been. All she wanted to do was get home as quickly as possible. It was pitch black as she retraced the route taken on the trip over. There was no moon and, once she entered the Grayling district, few street lamps. It was a perfect night for Halloween.

A few minutes after she entered Grayling, the car began to sputter. Within a block the engine was dead and she was just coasting along. Margaret looked at the gas gauge and came to the horrifying realization that in all the melee she’d forgotten to get gas. As the car rolled slowly to a complete stop, she pulled over to the curb in front of a boarded-up store front and turned off the lights and ignition. The silence and the darkness caved in on her like going deaf and blind simultaneously. Already the fear was gripping her. Looking up and down the street, she saw neither people nor cars. Even the nearest street lamp was several blocks away with nothing in between but an immense expanse of darkened buildings and murky shadows.

What was she going to do? She couldn’t stay here all night. She thought about flagging down a motorist, if one ever showed up, but when she realized that she had no idea who they might be, she dropped that plan. Striving to regain her rationality, Margaret tried to remember if she’d seen anyplace open in the last few blocks. She looked back and saw only an occasional light, none bright enough to have been a cafe or bar or gas station. How about phone booths? Hadn’t she seen one on the left-hand side of the street recently? Yes, she was sure she had. She remembered that it was on a corner, right in front of a building that looked like a warehouse or something.

She determined that this was her only choice. She simply had to walk back there and call Triple-A for help. It was the only thing that made sense.

The first time she reached for the door latch, her hand refused to move. It was then she realized the depth of her fear. On the second try, she managed to get the door open but jerked it shut again as soon as the interior lights came on. The one thing she didn’t want now was to attract attention. Visions of sharks imploding on a feeding frenzy flashed briefly through her mind. “Stop that!” she shouted at herself. “Isn’t the reality bad enough without making things up?”

Now she virtually jumped out of the car and began walking briskly back up the street. Her heels sounded like sledge hammers against the sidewalk. Immediately she slowed her pace to quiet them down. “Maybe I should go barefoot,” she mused to herself. No, that was stupid. Just keep on walking. It would soon be over and she’d have something to laugh about tomorrow. Yes, it would make a great story.

Click, click, click, click, her heels were as quiet as they were likely to get and still she was sure she could be heard for blocks in every direction. She still saw no one ahead of her. There was some consolation in that at least. As long as she remained alone, she could stave off the panic that waited in the wings of her heart, crouching like a great cat, poised to spring upon its prey without warning. Still she kept it at bay.

Click, click, click, one block behind her now but how many more to go? She didn’t know. Was it three, four, five, more? She had no idea at all. Just keep walking steadily. That was the thing to do, and that’s just what she did.

Now she crossed the third intersection, looking right and left for anything encouraging. Nothing but even greater blackness. At the end of the fourth block, Quincy Avenue, she looked to the left and saw a spot of light. It was in the middle of the third block and too far away to identify with any certainty. It vaguely resembled a phone booth but she couldn’t be sure. Now she faced a decision: keep on as she had been or turn left toward what she hoped was a telephone and deliverance. She looked ahead and saw nothing at all inviting. At least she could see a light up Quincy. She had to go for it.

Turning left, she struck out for the distant glow. In less than three minutes, she was approaching the light. As she stepped up onto the curb at the beginning of the block, she could see it well enough to realize that it was not a phone booth. It was only a small bulb hung low on a telephone pole in front of a doorway. Her steps slowed then and within a few feet she turned with disappointment to begin retracing her steps.

Before she had walked ten feet, her heart came to a sudden, screeching halt. Ahead of her, about the middle of the next block, she saw a shadow move. It was about the size and shape of a man. Whoever it was seemed to be walking very slowly, purposefully and directly toward her. Her adrenal glands had to bring in a swing shift just to keep up with demand.

What was she going to do? What could she do? Still walking, though much more slowly, she was now at the end of the block, less than a hundred feet from the shadow looming ahead. On the spur of the moment, she decided to take a right at the corner. This put her on yet another dark street but at least there were no moving shadows ahead of her. “God, please let him just keep walking when he gets to the corner,” she whispered through clenched teeth.

Margaret was almost halfway down the block when she heard his footsteps in the vacuum behind her. Now he was stepping off the curb to cross the street (”so far, so good”); now he was walking across the street (”please keep walking”); up onto the curb of the same sidewalk she had just passed over (”just keep walking straight ahead”). She knew that if he continued straight ahead, his footsteps would be inaudible in a matter of seconds. Walking as quietly as possible, she listened to the measured steps behind her … one, two, three, four, five … she could still hear them clearly. He had turned behind her. The graveyard shift went to work at the adrenalin factory. No doubt about it: he was following her, or if that is not the word, then stalking.

What ensued was a violent revolution of the heart and mind. A psychic eves-dropper would have heard - “RUN! Run as fast as you can!”; “What are you crazy? That will just bring him down on me sooner. I need time to think.”; “Right, and you’ll still be thinking while he’s slitting your throat! Run, Margaret, it’s your only hope!”; “I don’t want to die in this stupid costume, with this ridiculous mask and make-up. Hell, I’ve never even seen Paris.”; “Shut up and run like Hell!” - or words to that effect.

Tears were beginning to form at the corners of her eyes, waiting, like the panic, to burst into the spotlight and wreak their own special form of havoc. Her control of these primal instincts was growing weaker with every step. Then, quietly, matter-of-factly, with a serenity that astounded her, she heard herself saying almost aloud, “These are the last few moments of my life. How do I want to spend them? Running like a frightened rabbit? Pleading shamelessly like I did when Franklin left? No! I’ve done enough of that all my life. This is my last chance to take a stand and I’m not going to blow it. He may do whatever it is he intends, but by God I won’t make it easy.”

At that very moment, everything became so clear to her. She was as cool as the black-box recordings of airline pilots about to crash. Her entire body relaxed, her gait became smooth, even and effortless, she knew exactly what she was going to do. Improvise.

Reaching into her purse, she calmly wrapped her fingers around the fruit jar containing the unused portions of the alcohol. Methodically she unscrewed the top and slowly brought it to her lips. She took one small but throat scorching swallow, just for courage, then filled her mouth with as much as it would hold. Returning the jar to her purse, she retrieved a cigarette lighter she kept there, having quit smoking, for no reason in particular. Holding it close to her chest to hide the flame, she flicked it a couple of times, just to make sure it was still operable. Having determined that it was, she then moved the lever that controls the height of the flame all the way to the right. She was ready.

Margaret slowed to a complete stop. Taking a deep breath through her nose, her mouth still filled with hi-test alcohol, she turned and stood quite still. She could see his silhouette clearly now less than 20 yards away. When he saw her stop, he did the same. Then, to her own surprise and amazement, not to mention his, she began to shuffle forward in her now well rehearsed crone-walk holding the lighter at chest level with her right hand. Neither fast nor slow, it was a walk, not of assurance or determination, but of destiny. He remained where he was as she approached. Neither could see the other’s face, not at ten yards, not at ten feet or even five. Margaret slowed her pace with every step until at last she was just over arm’s length from him. She stopped, still as the night.

There they stood motionless, speechless, suspended in time for what an observer might have guessed was half a minute. Then he shifted his weight to his right foot slightly. She knew he was going to come at her now. With only the slightest effort she positioned the lighter directly level with and a few inches in front of her mouth. Just as his left foot moved forward, she flicked the lighter an instant before expelling the contents of her mouth.

As the spray of nearly pure alcohol flew past the flame, it ignited, creating a ball of fire that lit the street for half a block in either direction. As the last of the flame consumed itself, the man saw, for just the briefest moment, the hideous face behind it. The scream that emerged from his tortured soul is still echoing through haunted houses from Salem to Edinburgh. It was a sound no mortal was ever meant to utter but which, on certain occasions, is the only appropriate expression of the experience of the utterer at the moment. Such was the case here.

In the dim light of a distant street lamp, Margaret could see her former adversary running like a scalded whippet in a line so straight you could lay bricks by it, running until he was completely out of sight. All the while she, the Black Witch of Grayling, laughed as only witches can, sending gaggles of cackles careening off into the depths of All Hallows’ Eve.

So great was her amusement that all the way back to her car she staggered like a drunken buccaneer. Even after she had called the Triple-A on her cell phone (which had been conveniently forgotten earlier), even as she was driving back to Sharon’s party, even as she pulled into the same parking place she had left in despair less than an hour ago, she was still flooding the night with witchy mirth. She said nothing when she entered Sharon’s front door. She calmly, simply and silently walked directly across the room to where Franklin stood with his bimbette of the week and, when she had his undivided attention, flicked her BIC just one more time.

Most people believe that their lives are largely a matter of cause and effect

with a substantial dose of random chance (or luck, if you prefer). Some see destiny as being involved. They are wrong. Life is an experssion of choices and the creativity with which all consciousness is richly endowed.

I have been viewing life from that perspective for over 30 years, and I will admit that there have been times and circumstances that were difficult to see within that context. I have always been able to do it, nonetheless. Now it is almost always easy and obvious to me, because I’ve done it so many times.

One of the best tools I have had with which to hone my ability to translate conventional experiences and circumstances into ones that affirm our power, authorship, and creativity are the countless people I’ve known, or known of, whose lives themselves were proof. Nick Vujicic is one of those people. Rather than tell you about Nick, I’ll let him tell you himself. Watch this video before reading on.

From my perspective, and I hope from Nick’s, it seems abundantly clear that here is a man who, in that thought-incubator between lives, asked himself, “I wonder what it would be like to be born severely challenged physically, and to then find my way to a wonderful life, and in the process become a charismatic teacher to millions?” That question, or one like it, must have drawn his attention, his imagination, his love, and ultimately his total comittment. What you have just seen is his answer to that question. Think he did okay? I sure do.

What I want you to ask yourself is this: how better could anyone have become who this amazing man became? When someone else encourages you to keep trying to get up after you fall, it’s just words, metaphor, and abstraction. But when Nick shows you, it’s profoundly real.

Nick is a miracle worker, not so much because of how he turned his “victimhood” into valor, but because of the brilliance of the strategy through which he did it. That is the real secret to the miracle worker in each of us.

Look at your life, or anyone’s, and ask yourself this: “What purposes could not be accomplished better in any other way?” The answer, if you are patient and sincere, will tell you why you came here and perhaps even help you to understand what may lay ahead for you in the furtherance of that purpose.

I can tell you from my own personal experience, and I hope Nick and others would agree, that seeing how you set up the specific challenges you have, in the exact ways you did, to enable you to solve them and grow in the process, is a heartrending and beautiful experience.

Thank-you Nick, and all the others, who have, by there extraordinary examples, shown us all how we engage in the benevolent conspiracies that form the dramas of our lives. Illustrating this principle was among my primary purposes in writing When Gulls Fly Low (see link at top right of this page for more). If I could only offer one gift to someone, it just might be this vision of their life purpose and how everything they have ever experienced occurred in service of that desire. I hope this has nudged you farther in that direction. Let me know if it did. I’d love to hear your story, just as I loved hearing Nick’s.

The old man’s hands are clean.
His nails, highly polished, shine
like shells upon the beach.
His wrinkled skin is smooth and pale,
his once-bright eyes now seldom smile.
People hurt him long ago,
and now he waits alone to die.
He is my father.
And I cry.
Alone

Yep. You heard me right. To be more precise, genetically engineered E-Coli. Lonnie Ingram, a professor of microbiology with University of Florida’s “Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences” has genetically engineered a strain of E-Coli that produces fuel ethanol from non-edible sugar sources at an estimated cost of $1.30 gallon.

Just in case you missed it, one of the most significant implications of that statement is “non-edible.” In other words, it is of no use to either humans of animals as a source of nourishment. It’s just a waste product that must be disposed of. Until now. But wait, it gets better.

There are certain types of grasses and other vegetation that can grow quite well on land that is not suitable for growing any kind of edible plants. This land, from the agricultural standpoint, is utterly useless. Yet the E-Coli thrive on these plants. So what we have is the ability to feed bacteria on plants that don’t take a single acre of land away from the production of edible food, and have the capacity to produce enormous quantities of fuel that can immediately replace the fossil fuels we have become so dependent on.

Now, ethanol is not a silver bullet, even if it fell right out of the sky into your gas tank. It dumps at best only about one third less carbon into the atmosphere as what most of us are burning now. On the other hand, a third is a third. And it will take some of the pressure off while we bring something even better into full production.

The developers of this technology are confident that, with a little more creative bio-engineering, they can create new strains of bacteria that can poop diesel, gasoline, or even jet fuel. Diesel has already been proven.

And then there is always the possible risk intrinsic to putting a new man-made species of organism into the world. We have no particular reason to think there is any danger, but no one can honestly say that they know with absolute certainty. We do, however, know that if we don’t do something to slow down, and eventually stop, global warming, the rest will all be academic soon enough. Maybe this isn’t as big a gamble as it might at first appear.

Both the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Energy are taking it very seriously, and with good reason. For more on this technology, look here: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/05/genetically_eng.php.

This episode happened in just after Christmas of 1984. I was in the habit at that time of going to a particular restaurant in the neighborhood for breakfast on the weekends. After I ate, I was enjoying a cup of coffee before leaving, and I found myself in a conversation with an older couple at the next table. We talked for a while, and I liked them a lot. We said good-bye, and they left just before I did.

After I paid my bill and went out to get in my car, I noticed that they were still sitting in their car. He was having trouble getting it started. It was quite cold, and I was pretty sure I knew what he was doing wrong. So I went over and asked if I could help. There was still enough charge left in the battery to give me a couple of tries at starting it.

I had learned about this type of car (a big Detroit V8), and I was pretty sure what it needed was just to put the gas pedal all the way down and leave it there till the engine started. Not exactly rocket science. But most people would pump the gas, or take their foot off the gas pedal or something, and that just made things impossible.

So, I got in, put the pedal to the metal, and turned the key. It turned over a few times, and then began to chug its way to life. Soon it was purring like a kitten. I told him I’d follow him home just in case, and he thanked me.

They only live a few blocks away, and when we got there, he motioned me that he wanted to talk. I waited while he walked over and asked me if I liked music. I said that yes, I did. He invited me in to hear something very special. I couldn’t resist.

It turned out that he had retired young for health reasons, and kept himself busy by helping young inventors and innovators develop their ideas and found people with money to help them make their dreams come true. One of his recent protegees had invented something that we would now call a sub-woofer. I’d never heard of any such thing, then. And it was indeed very special. I’d never heard bass sounds that realistic.

He then played an audio recording for me of an interview with a couple. The man had been severely crippled by two strokes, and had be receiving physical therapy from a practitioner who had developed a new device. It read the electrical impulses that nerves emit when you think about moving a muscle, but that were blocked from reaching the intended muscle. His device used wires to carry (and amplify) these electrical signals past the blockage, and connect them to the intended muscle. In this way, the man was again able to think about moving his leg, and the leg actually moved in response.

The point of this part of my story is just this. When the man was asked how this device affected his life, he broke down and cried. His wife had to answer for him. She said that he had thought his life was over, but now he could see where he had a chance of recuperating. This experimental gizmo changed everything.

As I listened to this recording, I was reminded of a similar situation that had happened to me some years before. I had written a computer program that was able to collect text from the screen of an ordinary computer and send it to a voice synthesizer so that it could be spoken aloud. This allowed a totally blind person to operate the computer without being able to see the screen. Before my program, the best way for a blind person to read computer output was by using a pin to find the holes in an IBM punch card. Obviously, this was a major improvement.

Soon after I got the first prototype working, I received a call from the Executive Director of a non-profit foundation in San Francisco. He had heard about what I had done, and was very interested in talking about it. He himself was an engineer with two advanced degrees, and he was also blind. I sent him a copy of my program the next day.

A week or two later he called me back and we talked for a long time about my program. Clearly there were lots of things that could be improved, and we both were full of ideas of what could be done. After quite a while, I was going on about some of the shortcomings of the existing program, when he stopped me. He said, “You’re right. The program leaves much to be desired. But let’s keep this in perspective. I’ve had this computer for six months, and all I’ve been able to do with it was hold down paper. Now I can actually use it. So no matter how much better the software could be, it is already a black and white difference to me.”

That stopped me dead in my tracks. I had been so caught up in the technology that I had totally lost track of the human aspect. My little program–all 500 bytes of it–had turned on the lights in the computer room. Period. By the time our conversation was over, we had reached agreement on a substantial grant that they would give me so that I could take things to the next level. In less than a month, it was done. The next month the only computer the program would run on was discontinued, and the whole thing became academic. For a while.

Now here I was in 1984 listening to the recording of another man’s life being changed by a new technology, and I got to thinking that maybe it was time for me to resurrect my talking computer. Within 24 hours I picked up a copy of a computer magazine and saw an ad for a new type of voice synthesizer that had all the features that the one I had started with lacked. And it was cost only a quarter as much.

I called my new friend and asked him if he’d be interested in helping me put this new project into the real world. He said he sure would, and we got together to talk about it. He said that he knew someone who represented some Oklahoma oil money who might be interested in financing the venture.

The following week he and I met with the money man, and the three of us talked about how we could put the whole thing together. It seemed to me then that these two old war horses were having the time of their lives talking about how we could form one corporation for R & D, and another one to do the manufacturing, and yet another for marketing and distribution, and one would license this to that one and on and one and on. When the meeting was over, I didn’t feel any closer to anything useful than I did walking in. But at least we scheduled another meeting in a few days.

The second meeting just continued where the first one had left off. And when all was said and done, nothing had really changed. I guess I had expected us to reach some kind of decision, though I hadn’t really thought it out that far yet. But after the second meeting, I did.

What jumped out at me immediately was that no one was talking about whether we were going to do anything or what it was going to be, but only about how we could do it. That seemed totally backward to me. By that time I had made my decision: I was going to do it regardless of what anyone else did.

So I got to thinking, maybe I didn’t need them or their money or anything else. Maybe I could just do it myself. But I would need to find a way to take the time off to do the work. And that’s when the inspiration hit. I’d go back to the well once again.

My original work was paid for by the state blind commission on behalf of one of their clients. He wanted to attend college and study computer programming, but he couldn’t because he couldn’t use the computer. So they paid me to allow him to do that. Why not go back to them and suggest that they help me take it to the next level, with the newer technology.

I made an appointment with the Directory of the agency, and made my pitch. I asked him to buy two copies of my new program (which I hadn’t written yet) and that I would have six weeks to deliver them (twice as long as it had taken me before). His first comment was that if he did that, he would have a problem, because no one in his agency knew anything about computers. His solution was to buy not only the software, but 100 hours of my time, over the next year, to help them make the technology work for them and their clientele. All of which would be prepaid.

Needless to say, I jumped on it. We still had to pitch it to the board of commissioners, but that turned out to be even easier. As one man said, “I don’t see that we have any choice in the matter.” The vote was unanimous. Six weeks later I delivered the programs on time. Six months (and several more copies of the program) later I had provided my 100 hours and started billing for additional time.

Meanwhile, I called my mentor to tell him that I had made other arrangements. He was delighted. It wasn’t like he needed the money. He really did just want to help people and have something interesting to do himself.

So when I saw Honest Abe’s words today, I thought, “You were right then, Abe, and you still are. First decide that you are going to do it, then figure out how.” If you get those reversed, it is highly unlikely you will ever get anywhere at all.

P.S.

Oh yes, it is also worth mentioning that the business I started in that way lasted almost a decade, went through 7 generations of software, and changed the lives of thousands of blind people all over the planet, many of them students. Among my users were: a microbiologist and computer scientist who played a key role in the Human Genome Project, an international economist who worked for both the Department of State and Peentagon, and many of the finest examples of humanity it has ever been my honor to know.

At first this mystified me, because I’d never thought of it as anything like that. But I figured that so many people couldn’t be wrong. So I looked a little closer, and I could see what they meant. Then one reader, Judi S., wrote and published a review of the book that highlighted that aspect. Below is an excerpt from her review in which she quotes a passage from the Gulls that is very representative of the way it deals with forgiveness. Notice, the word is never even mentioned.

Here, Henry is talking to his mother-in-law, Josie. They have been adversaries until now, but she has now removed herself as an obstacle in his life. She is surprised that he does not take the opportunity to gloat at having “dethroned the old battle-ax.” Henry says:

“I am only trying to be who I most want to be. That is, in fact, how I try live my life. Yes, I could have held a grudge against you. But what purpose would that have served? How could I possibly have benefited from that? It would have created an unbridgeable gap between me and the mother of the woman I love; it would have brought the problems of having to make war with you down upon my new family; it would have brought no joy to anyone on this Earth. How could I make such a choice knowing all of that?”

Josie replied, “Perhaps that is the key, Henry. You did know all of that. I suppose it is only when we do not see the rest of the picture, when we become obsessed with those powerful emotions, that we fail to recognize the folly of our choices in time to prevent it.”

So when I think of forgiveness, I think of Henry and of these three paragraphs, and I know all I need to know.

=================================================================================

So I have been thinking more and more about the stories I tell myself that are best expressed in this way. Although I am learning about the true nature of stories in general, I feel no closer to unraveling my own. I feel the need to find the truth of my stories so that I can at least understand, if not change them. It is becoming almost an obsession, but a benevolent one. It feels more like a survival skill that I am far from mastering. Here are some of the things I have learned so far.

First, I am increasingly certain that I am right about it all being stories, “it” meaning our experience of being alive as ourselves. Once one realizes that our entire experience occurs in the spacious present moment, the intrinsic role of our stories becomes obvious and inescapable. There is no other explanation. The past and future, the elsewhere in space, and our entire interpretation of the present are just collections of stories, personal myths if you like, that we tell ourselves to give context and meaning to everything we experience. This is true even of our sense of self in every detail.

The next thing I questioned was the source of these stories, their nature, and the fantastic tenacity they seem to possess. Then, of course, there is the question of the rules by which old ones can be modified or retired, and new ones added to the mix. This has proven to be a most interesting pursuit.

The temptation, when answering the question of their source, is to look into the “past.” But that is obviously circular, since the past itself is just another story. So the source of our stories must also be in the present, just as the stories themselves are, just as everything else within our experience is and must be. There is a certain rootlessness to this. It is analogous to having both feet firmly planted in thin air. This troubled me for a while, until I realized that it is true: the whole of our physical existence, including but not limited to, physical reality itself, is an arbitrary work of fiction. What is important is that behind and everywhere within it is agreement on that fiction. This is the real meaning of phrases like “the world of agreement.”

So what seems to be true is that there is only one basic story that we share with everyone with whom we interact, though we each have our own variations. Yet even the variations must be faithful to the root story or we are considered at least a hair off center, if not outright insane. This story of ours is a work in progress that, though it is all happening in the spacious present, gives the appearance of going back billions of years. Time can be viewed as a version control system by which we increment the evolution of our shared story. History, then, is an account of that evolution retrospectively.

Thirty years ago I made the observation that nothing is ever destroyed or removed (at least that’s what is in my story). Change occurs by addition only. Yet there is nothing that cannot be changed into anything else whatsoever by addition. If you add enough of the right stuff to it, its original character and identity can be transformed into anything at all. So it is with our stories. We cannot remove anything from them: we can only add to them. This can be done, however, in a way that has the effect of obscuring certain facets to the extent that they seem to disappear altogether.

But we cannot add just  any old thing to our story willy-nilly. There is tremendous resistance to that. Instead we can only add things that connect well to what is already there. It is not so different from Lego blocks: you can add them together in certain ways, but you cannot just jam a peach pit or quartz crystal into them and expect it to fit. There must be a reciprocity between the new addition and some point on the main body.

However, if that were all there was to it, nothing really new could ever change. Fortunately, this is not the case. So how do we maintain this consistency and continuity while allowing for innovation and real change? Good question, and I have a good answer: we must either be very clever or else we need to allow loopholes. Here’s what I mean.

Let’s take the clever approach first. The best example of how this works is the way in which Albert Einstein transformed the reality of Sir Isaac Newton into the one that produce the atomic bomb and quantum mechanics. He did not invalidate Newton’s laws of gravity, motion, and thermodynamics. Instead, Einstein simply put them under a microscope and pointed out that they were only approximations of the way things really work—an excellent approximation, but an approximation nonetheless. As it turns out, Newton’s formulas work extraordinarily well, even today, until you get into mindbogglingly large magnitudes of space, time, mass or energy. In fact, NASA uses them (rather than Einstein’s relativistic ones) in their interplanetary navigation to this day.

To give you a clear picture of how this works, consider the formulas each of these men created to describe the mass of a body in motion. Newton’s is very simple:

M_m= M_o

where M_o is the original mass at rest, and M_m is the same mass in motion.

In other words, there is no difference between the two. Motion does not affect mass. Einstein, however, added some fine tuning. His version goes like this:

M_m= M_o/(1- v²/c²)^½

where v=the velocity of the mass and c= the speed of light.

What is important to understand here is the effect changes in the mass’s velocity have on the objects mass in motion. To see this, one only needs to examine the two extreme examples of velocity: zero and the speed of light. If v=0, then v²/c²=0, 1-0=1, the square root of 1 is 1, and the mass at rest divided by 1 is itself. In other words, exactly what Newton said.

However, when we give velocity a value of the speed of light, we get something entirely different. Now v²/c² is equal to 1, 1-1=0, and M_o/0 is…wait a minute, we are not allowed to divide by zero! So mass cannot be defined at exactly the speed of light! We don’t have the math for it. However, if velocity were 99.99999% the speed of light, then we can see that as v approaches c, the value of M_m approaches infinity.

What all this means is that at velocities that are not particularly close to the speed of light, the mass of an object does not change appreciably from its rest mass. Only as it starts to approach the speed of light does it begin to get more massive, to the point where, as it approaches that barrier, it has nearly infinite mass. This is the basic relationship that has led to the famous conclusion that no mass can be accelerated to, much less beyond, the speed of light. It is considered an absolute barrier to the physical dimension.

So, getting back to our original point—how one can add dramatically new elements to our collective story line if we are clever enough—this is how Einstein added everything to our universe that requires relativity to exist and make any sense at all. He did not have to destroy or remove Newton’s Laws: he had only to modify them by addition, in this case by fine tuning. You could say he added a relativistic fudge factor. Had this extension not been added, then none of our modern technology could even exist: not only the bomb and nuclear power, but computers, exotic materials, and others too numerous to mention. In other words, it was HUGE! It had the effect of increasing the breadth, depth, and scope of physical reality by—pardon the expression—light-years.

So we can add new and radically different plot elements to our shared and private stories in this way, but though it may not take an Einstein to do so this way, it does require a certain creative bend that many of us lack.

Enter the other, and far more common, method of innovation by story extension: the loophole. By loophole I simply mean a catchall explanation, a way of joining a new story element to the original, that allows for some degree of mismatch. One of the most obvious of these is called a miracle. The dictionary defines a miracle thusly:

A marvelous event manifesting a supernatural act of God.

The operative word here is supernatural. In other words, “the rules are suspended.” This creates the loophole. However, we cannot call every little thing we would like to add to our story a miracle, just because it doesn’t fit into the standard template. So this loophole is of limited use, being generally reserved for extraordinary events that are at once extremely compelling (usually in the positive sense) and at the same time without explanation within the context of our existing story.

Other versions of the supernatural loophole are less restrictive. Everything from flying saucers to ESP to channeling to [fill in the blank] are all candidates for this type of loophole. So this is the one that is most often used by the majority of people. Yet even this approach has its limits. If everything becomes an exception, what happens to the rule? How will you be able to share your new version of our story with others who are not as lenient about the freewheeling use of loopholes? If you abuse this tactic, you are likely to take your story additions to your grave with you, leaving no imprint behind that they ever existed (yes, I know, just another story).

So when all is said and done, we are still left with the story-in-progress, and all the personalized versions we all cling to.

There is one more major feature of our stories that we haven’t yet touched on: tenacity. Once a new element is added to the story and becomes accepted, it wants to be forever. If you even think about adding something that contradicts it, you will hear screaming the like of which would be upsetting in Hades. For good or ill, we are in certain major respects bound to our existing stories. Only by adding new elements in an acceptable way can we obscure or reverse outdated or undesirable elements. But there is a good reason for this.

First, if we are to share reality, we must agree on what it is. Otherwise, we are like jazz musicians who get together to jam, but find that they each know the same tune in different keys. What a cacophony that would be. Similarly, if your version of the story said that Hitler won WWII, imagine how that would match up with the official version of other people’s WWII story. So one general version prevails, and though some freedom is allowed in the details, the main thrust must be accepted more or less unanimously.

This, however, brings up an interesting and potentially powerful point: differences between individual stories only become important when we start comparing them. For example, half the people you know may have accepted stories where there was a significantly different end to WWII than the one you accept. But if the subject never comes up between you, neither party would have any way of knowing that these differences exist. So what we are really talking about here is not that our personal versions of the story have to agree in ever minute detail, but that we can only share the portions of our stories that do. As long as we stay away from the “trouble spots,” we can interact.

One more point, just to satisfy the more astute: what about ordinary disagreements between individuals. Surely there is no commonality there? Well, I admit it appears so at first blush. But upon closer examination, you will find that in such cases, each participant actually has accepted the point of view of their counterpart, but they have tried to suppress it (unsuccessfully). So, they don’t think of themselves as believing that variation, and consequently feel obliged to argue against it, while all the time there is someplace within them that actually agrees. This is what brings together people like that. They are trying to work out these particular variations until there is unanimity within their individual story. Argument and dialog is one way to accomplish that. So even though there may seem to be unbridgeable gaps between people’s stories, they are in actuality nothing more than penciled in extensions that have yet to be fully worked out and integrated.

And this whole piece is just one such. If there was nothing in you that was consistent with and open to these views, you would not only not be reading this, but would likely live your entire life without being aware that it (or I) existed. The fact that you are experiencing it means that there is something within you that thinks it is, or may be, true. No exceptions.

Conversely, if you disagree with me, and I find out about it, then I must have my own doubts (or mixed certainties, as I like to call them). If, on the other hand, I don’t find out, then it says volumes about you, but little about me.

So that’s the short course on stories. There is so very much more to it, even now, but this is all I have worked out so far that I’m prepared to stand behind.

In closing let me say that one of the challenges I face in exploring this direction lies in integrating it with my own story. I am trying to use the same kind of approach Einstein did, because it tends to be more rigorous, more stable, and more enduring. The cheap out (miracles) just doesn’t give one much to build on afterward, and I seek only that which will seed great extensions to the story, those that can make an extensive, powerful, and positive change for anyone who chooses to adopt them.

So on the day-after-Thanksgiving, I am above all thankful for the opportunity and ability to explore in these kinds of directions. It is, I believe, what I came here to do above all other things. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

And this is my story today, such as it is. What’s yours?

As a freshman in college I took my first psychology course in which I was introduced to many new and interesting concepts. Among these was something called “consensual validation.” I don’t recall the precise definition given to this term, but it was something like: “granting validity to a belief or practice, because the group of which one is a member agrees that it is true.”

We all learn about consensual validation very early in life, but it really becomes a serious issue as we enter adolescence. What high school student hasn’t felt the impact of “peer pressure?” Peer pressure is just another alias for consensual validation. And, as any high school student can tell you, it is a powerful force indeed.

Another interesting aspect of this kind of validation is that, while it is something of a majority-rules phenomenon, it can be instigated by as few as one person in the group, provided they have enough influence over a majority of others. In other words, the views of the few become the views of the many, and the views of the many become the “law” for all. How does this actually happen? In some cases, it is quite legitimate. The thrust of the proposition is really in the best interests of the group. But often such is not the case. It is those examples we will be dealing with here.

Yet why do the few, or the one, who start the ball rolling want it to roll in one particular direction? Maybe it is just a way for them to prove to themselves that they have personal power. “Look what I can ‘make’ them do,” may be the motivation for such pursuits. Or perhaps it simply brings about a condition that they feel is to their advantage in the group. Regardless of the actual motivation, the simple fact is that there is some kind of purpose to these coercive approaches, and those who instigate them believe that it is to their advantage to do so. Hence you have the appearance of “perpetrators” and “victims.” But is that all there is to it?

From a higher perspective, some things become clear that are not generally recognized by those directly involved. For example, why do those who become the majority fall in line behind their “leaders?” And why do those in the minority agree to be ruled by the majority? These are all choices made by individuals without which the phenomenon of consensual validation and peer pressure simply could not exist.

Imagine what would happen if the leader suggested that the group adopt a certain idea or practice, and no one went along with it? It dies right there, right? And what if a majority of the group agree, for whatever reasons, but the minority say, “Forget it. I’m out of here,” and withdraw from the group rather than go along? Viewed this way, it is clear that everyone involved is, at some crucial level, giving their voluntary consent to the proposition.

Yet the usual view of such things declares that the leaders influence the majority who are the “perpetrators,” and the minority who comes under their “domination” thus become the “victims.” Nothing of the kind is true. It is better viewed as a willing conspiracy entered into by all concerned, and in which each individual plays a role. The three basic roles are “instigator,” “henchman,” and “victim.” Each of these can contain sub-roles as well. For example, the majority member who goes along with the flow, but secretly thinks it is wrong.

In the case of the instigators, there is almost always some kind of fear involved in their motivation. Why would someone seek power in such a way? Because they feel powerless otherwise. This implies that their life experience has led them to a belief in their own powerlessness, and they are trying to balance that by creating dramatic evidence that they are indeed powerful. And the henchmen are probably doing the same thing vicariously. The victims, on the other hand, share the same belief in the powerlessness of the individual, but opt to express this belief by proving that they are powerless.

So the belief involved, that the individual is powerless, occupies a prominent position in the belief systems of all participants. By playing out their roles in the game of consensual validation, they are simply bringing their beliefs about their own humanity, individually and collectively, to life. And the truth of this must remain secret, or it will fail to produce the desired result: proof of concept. (Imagine what would happen if everyone involved knew quite consciously all that I’ve just said. )

So when you see such processes taking place, look within them and see that all concerned share one or more basic beliefs, and that the group is expressing those beliefs through their choices and actions, and that it is all voluntary despite appearances to the contrary. This is true whether the arena is a political process, or a war, or fraternity hazing. As always, there are no victims or villains, only volunteers.

To begin with, the overwhelming majority of organizations that are collectively know as “the media” are profit-making companies, or are at least consciously intended to be. In other words, like all corporations, they are driven by the “bottom line.” To understand their motives, all you have to do is look at the sources of their income: paid advertising. Whether it’s television commercials, Internet pop-ups, or printed ads, by individuals or other corporations, ad revenue is the life blood of any media company.

Now there are other media companies who sell subscriptions or tickets. These include cable television, film studios and their distribution channels. But even they usually make more money on advertising, or at least after-market promotions, than they do from direct sales.

In other words, they are employed by advertisers to put their messages in front of people. Nowhere is this more evident than in the broadcast media and print periodicals of all kinds. Sponsors and advertisers make the decisions as to what they will pay for. And what influences those choices? It’s simple: what sells more cornflakes, gasoline, computers, or toothpaste. If people do not buy products and services, the advertisers abandon one medium in search of another that better serves their purposes.

But the advertisers operate at the pleasure of the buying public. If people do not watch the TV show you sponsor, or if they watch it but don’t buy anything, it’s time to look elsewhere. So at the end of the day, it is the consumer who makes the decisions as to what the media marketplace offers. They vote with their wallets countless millions of times every single day, and no one on Earth pays more attention to those votes than advertisers, unless it’s media executives.

So when I hear people talking about the “power of the media,” or complaining about the choices of this relative handful of executives, I have to shake my head at their lack of any real understanding of what they’re talking about. As Pogo Possum (for those of you too young to remember, a popular political cartoon star in days gone by) once said, “We has met the enemy, and he is us.”

The media is enormously responsive to the preferences, even the casual whims, of their respective reader/viewer-ships. Those who are not, don’t survive long, and they know it all too well. If you want to point a finger, if you want to know what has to change before the media offerings change, you need only look in the mirror, at your friends, neighbors, your fellow countrymen and women. It is our choices that are driving everything. We get exactly what we are willing and able to support and darned little else. How else could it be?

So if you want to rewrite the bill-of-fare on the media’s main stage, withdraw your support from content you object to and thus the advertisers and their products, and lend your support to those who provide you with things you want to see more of. Encourage everyone you know to do so. If, and only if, enough people do this, will things change. Meanwhile, pick up a good book and read it. Choose something that feeds your heart and mind instead of your fear and anger. You do, after all, get what you focus on, and the choice is, and will forever remain, yours and yours alone. It is the only real power that matters. Use it well.

So technology can be legitimately applied to any endeavor that converts knowledge to practical use. In ancient times, something as simple as using one’s knowledge of the behaviors and characteristics of animals for tracking and hunting food was a technology. Nowadays it applies equally, of course, to computers and bioengineering. We use technology to improve life’s quality as well as its quantity.

Another way of looking at technology is as a means of gaining an advantage over the objects and events in our lives.

I prefer to view it as a form of intimacy. The more thoroughly and intimately we understand the true nature of anything, the more we can interact with it effectively. By that definition, omniscience is the ultimate technology.

I recently joined a large group of Internet users in a project called SETI@home. This project is under the auspices of SETI–the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence. SETI gathers radio and x-ray emissions from throughout the Universe and analyzes them, looking for patterns that are unlikely to be of a strictly natural origin. The problem is that they can gather this data far faster than they can analyze it.

SETI@home is an attempt to enlist the help of individuals in cutting the backlog of unanalyzed data down to size. To that end, the people at SETI created a computer program that allows anyone with Internet access to help process that raw data. The program is a screensaver that downloads packages of data and applies mathematical tools to identify probable intelligent sources. When one batch of data is completed, the program sends the results back to SETI and downloads a new batch. Depending on the computer and the amount of time available for the program to do its magic, it may take from a few hours to days, or even weeks, to complete a data set. In my case, I have been giving it about 18 hours a day for over two months. The really cool thing aboutSETI@home is that if you happen to be the one whose computer actually identifies an intelligent source of emissions, you will go down in history as a co-discoverer of the first extraterrestrial intelligent beings! How could I not get involved?

The other day I found myself wondering just how much work my computer is actually doing for SETI. I got out my handy spreadsheet program and started doing some calculations of my own. The results amazed even me. Here is the best way I discovered to express what I found. If a human being could do one calculation per second involving two numbers between 0 and 4 million, it would take one person over 48 million years to do what my machine has done in 60 days. Now of course, few if any of us could do such calculations at that speed, let alone every second for a lifetime, much less for millions of years. Another way of viewing the same thing would be for every adult male in the U.S. to spent a year doing nothing but these same calculations. It would take every living soul in North America to keep up with my computer in real time.

I further computed that a mere 500 computers like mine could in 60 days do as many calculations as a single person could have done if they started at the instant of the Big Bang! This is almost unimaginable. SETI@home was downloaded by 250,000 people the first day it was available! There are over half a billion computers online with millions more going online every day.

To make things even more astounding, Moore’s Law states that the computing power of digital machines will double every 18 months. This has been proven to be true for decades and still is. So in about 18 months, my computer will be able to do the same work in four weeks. Three years later, it will only take one week, and by the end of a decade, a single day.

My reason for mentioning all of this is simply to illustrate the power technology makes available to us, one and all. This, and to lay the groundwork for a view I have held for a couple of decades. More on that presently.

This information is readily accessible to anyone who wants it. Few, if any, care to look. Even fewer put the boundless pieces of simple, raw information together in certain combinations that paint a particular picture. It is not unlike having a jigsaw puzzle, but without a picture of what it’s supposed to look like when it’s fully assembled.

Another example quickly comes to mind, one I realized many years ago. Everything needed to build a computer, a space shuttle, or any other contrivance you choose, has been here and readily available since long before mammals walked on the good Earth. What took us so long to get around to putting all the pieces together effectively was a lack of collective knowledge. It would not be a distortion to say that we, humankind, have spent a long time in school. Of course, the materials needed to create time machines, or transporters, or replicators—a la Star Trek—are all here right now and have been all along. We just haven’t figured out how to put it all together yet.

Another astounding revelation that occurred to me lately is equally simple. It is not a matter of if we find intelligent life elsewhere in this Universe of ours: it’s only a matter of when! It may be later today, or it may take many years, but it is virtually inevitable. The same goes for all the other magical dreams man has had. People dreamed of walking on the moon for millennia before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin finally did it for us in 1969. But they did. Now it’s a fait accompli.

The popular saying, “What the mind of man can imagine, it can create” is not the most accurate take on the subject. I now see a better version as, “What the mind of man can imagine, it will create.” For it is the imagined itself that drives us to create. The moment we imagine, we lock ourselves into a process that must culminate in creation. This is far more a part of human nature than our alleged “predatory instincts.”

Arthur C. Clark, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey has said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Yesterday’s magic is today’s technology, and today’s magic is tomorrow’s technology.

Pulling it all together, technology is just one face of our evolutionary adventure. We create what we need to continue playing the game, and we create it at the moment we need it. In fact, what we create and when we do so offer great clues to our true purposes. The history of technology provides a flowchart of our progress toward our ultimate purposes. We do not waste time creating things that do not further our ends. Even the ugly or seemingly insane has a role to play in our ultimate success, though those roles are not always readily apparent. Or is it that we simply don’t lay the right pieces of the puzzle next to each other?

Take a look at the technologies we create and the problems they bring up. For example, for thousands of years, our beliefs about life and death could be handled well enough by some children’s fairytales invented by camel herders in an ancient culture. Not much had changed. But now, we have created technologies that put too great a strain on those feeble and antiquated beliefs. The birth control pill, advanced medical technology, genetic engineering, euthanasia, abortion, and many more innovations leave us little choice but to reexamine some of our most cherished, though not particularly well-thought-out, beliefs about ourselves and life itself. Only a fool would see these concerted developments as accidental. They are coming tied with the same bow because they are just different facets of the same jewel.

I have long loved the phrase, “You have gone as far as you can go without going further.” Well, we have reached that point in a huge variety of ways, with new ones being added daily. Ultimately, it will leave us no choice but to do just what we most need to: reexamine the views that have served our forebears well for millennia, but are now reaching the end of their usefulness.

And, as is our custom, we have divided up into camps (e.g., conservative and liberal) to debate and even do battle to determine whether to stick with the old ways, or find and develop new ones. This is one of the chief reasons for the upsurge of religions fundamentalism, not just in America, but in the world at large. These are people who are desperately hanging onto the past, hoping to die before they have to give it up and learn a whole new way of living in a fundamentally different world.

Make no mistake; even the most rabid progressive is counting on the conservatives to slow the wagon on its relentlessly accelerating ride down the hill of time. And the conservatives are likewise counting on the liberals to find ways to move us ahead without upsetting the whole shebang. What is sad is that we cannot seem to muster enough integrity to do so openly, honesty, right out in front of God and everybody. Instead, we insist on clinging desperately to dogma, enmity, and rancor rather than truth, cooperation, and brotherhood. Perhaps that too will respond to the message of the Internet, the first and only working anarchy in the history of our race. Perhaps that will be its greatest and most valuable contribution to our lives and evolution.

To find these answers we have little choice but to stick around and see what happens next. Tomorrow is, after all, another day.