Who Am I? Where Am I Going? Why Am I Here?

Does God have a purpose for my life? How do I know? And how do I find it? These questions asked honestly (more than nearly any others) force us to confront the fundamental realities of who we are, who God is, and the meaning of life.

Though some have suggested that people can bear the sense of meaninglessness, Viktor Frankl argued that humans have an innate need to find meaning in their lives. This need, he stated in his book Man's Search For Meaning, is even stronger than the need for food, water or shelter. 

Albert Camus likewise spoke of our human desire for meaning and purpose. In his view the longing for meaning comes face to face with an apparently indifferent universe. He labeled this fundamental conflict "the Absurd." While the human mind seeks order and meaning, the universe remains silent, hence this sense of absurdity. Thus, in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, there is really only one question that matters. Does it make sense to go on living once the meaninglessness (Camus' conclusion) of human life is fully understood and assimilated?

Understandably, these are serious issues. For this reason such questions are seldom voiced, though deep inside they niggle and churn, unsettling those who have failed to find truly satisfying answers. It is as if we are living in a dark room with no windows, with no light. 

Ah, but what if indeed light has entered the world? What if indeed there were a living God who has not left us in the dark?

This is what the Bible claims. Light has indeed come into the world.

Thomas Paine, who died in 1809, wrote that the Bible would be a forgotten book in 50 years. I'm pretty sure that a majority of young people do not know who he was. 

I found this the other day in one of my 1983 notebooks. It is a list of various responses to the question. "Who am I?" 

Analogies: 

Man is a machine. 

Man is a collection of atoms. 

Man is an animal. 

Man is a bundle of habits. 

Man is divine. 

Man is a living soul.

Once we get clarity on this first question, we can begin to get on track with the others.

From my youth I have been interested in philosophy. I remember asking philosophical questions as early as elementary school while swinging on the swings in the playground. In college I was attracted to both philosophy and art, and there's a sense in which the latter is simply a visible representation of the former. Check out this famous painting by Gaugin: 

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

Gaugin asked the right questions.

Are you still seeking answers to the questions rattling around within you?
When Jesus said "Seek and you shall find," the original verb meant 
"seek and keep seeking... and you will find."
Don't give up the fight.

The Antidote To Boredom

Johnny Cash's "One Piece at a Time" car.
Storyteller's Farm & Museum
Photo: Gary Firstenberg.

When I first heard someone share John Updike's notion of four life forces -- love, habit, time and boredom -- I found myself inwardly scoffing at the last of these, boredom. Why? Because at the time I said to myself, "I'm never bored. There is always way more to do than there is time. I have more books, more projects, more aspirations than I will ever accomplish."

Since that time, though, I have come to see that boredom has played a bigger factor in my life than I'd previously realized. And perhaps this is true for you, too.

I'll give an example. 

When I first began experimenting with AI art applications, I was mesmerized by what they can do. I didn't want to go to sleep at night because I want to play with these new toys. I had one of these apps on my iPhone and tried out every feature. I used a couple others on m laptop that were even more stupefying. (Here are examples of things I created with AI assistance.)

After a while, though, being "blown away" by these images--and the speed with which they can be produced--lost some of its luster. How is it that making mind-blowing images can so quickly become boring? 

One reason is that it's too easy... The illustrations are still very cool, and I like making them for this blog, but there is no real challenge. 

What I began to realize is that when we stop challenging ourselves, things get boring. Even life can get boring. Behind this thought is the real culprit. We are afraid to fail. Fear of failure paralyzes us, so we don't write the book that is in us or learn a new language or whatever it is that we'd like to achieve. So we lower the bar. That is, we lower our expectations so we're not disappointed. 

The antidote to boredom, therefore, is to have goals that challenge us. Go big! The bigger the better.

Here's a blog post I wrote along these lines in 2011. Maybe it will speak to you: Start a Huge Foolish Project. 

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45 Half-Written Blog Post Themes from June and July

"Out There Bear"

Every once in a while I make a list of things I intend to write about but haven't gotten to. Below is a list of things I have actually written about since June but have not taken time to polish. They are simply sitting in the queue for finishing work.

While making this list I recognized one of the flaws in my approach to blogging. I simply have too many interests and Ennyman's Territory has simply become a mashup or repository of sorts. I'm fairly certain that this is the wrong approach for blogging. That is, if you want a real following, it is helpful to have a single theme. 

So, here is a list of blog posts or explorations I've started recently. I just checked my stats and see that I have over 1800 drafts in my backlog. If you see something here you'd like to see me complete, leave a comment or send me a note.

The Transition from a Republic to a Nation of Caesars (History)
Balzac as Prometheus  (Literature)

Heidegger on Time and Being  (Philosophy)Who Are You?    (Philosophy/Psychology)

Let There Be Light! (Physics)

Poetry Busker Molly Ovenden (The Arts)

Can We Save Our Malls? (Society/Culture)

Can We Separate the Art from the Artist? (The Arts)

The Road to Serfdom (Economics)

Cate Blanchett as Tar (The Arts)

Cassandra, The Misunderstood Genius from Italy’s Northern Alps (Fiction)

Reflections on a Line from Bob Dylan’s Mississippi (Dylan/Philosophy)

An Anecdote from the Russian Revolution (History)

Consciousness, Phenomenology and Dreams   (Philosophy)

How to Get Your Board Game Published     (Entrepreneurialism)

PTSD Isn’t Just For Soldiers   (Mental Health)

Oppenheimer: The Movie    (The Arts)

Midnight In Paris        (The Arts)

The Girl on the Train    (The Arts)

The First Seven Minutes of The Godfather    (The Arts)

The Evolution of McLuhan’s Global Village    (Contemporary Culture)

Writing Prompts Courtesy ChatGPT    (Writing)

Polarity Management: Power vs. Goodness    (Psychology)

Stephen Kinzer’s The True Flag

Jacques Ellul on the Benefits and Dangers of Police Power    (Sociology)

The Disease of Conceit        (Ethics)

Springer Spaniels     (My first oil painting)

Housing Matters, But Let’s Be Real    (Sociology and Government)

An Example of How Worry Can Be Good    (Psychology)

My Own Version of You: Dylan’s Frankenstein Story    

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Cicero on Old Age

The Deceitfulness of the Heart

The $195,000 Tiny House in Duluth

Things I Have Learned from Sixteen Years of Blogging

Make a Game of It

UFO’s: What’s Really Happening Out There?

The Hundred Page Machine Learning Book

The One True Measure

Lights, Camera, Excellence: The Unforgettable Performances of Hollywood's Top 5 Actors

Who Was Philip of Macedon?

Oh Demon Alcohol

Why Is It So Hard to Fire Bad Teachers?

The MC Escher Exhibition in Florence

The National Debt: A Bigger Crisis Than Climate Change?

An Italian Love Poem Courtesy the Bard

* * * 

15 Questions for Bob Dylan, Plus an Anecdote

Original painting by the author

OK, it has been my privilege as a writer to interview hundreds of interesting people. Whether Congressmen, writers, artists or street people, everyone has stories, and I've always enjoyed ferreting them out. 

For the last couple decades I've been asked what I would say if I met Bob Dylan. My standard reply was that I really wouldn't know what to say. Lately however, as I reflected on these matters I began re-thinking my standard reply. There's plenty I would like to ask if he were in the mood for it, hence this list of 15 questions I'd ask if given the chance, knowing that any answer could lead to side-streets as way yields to way. 

Here's my list, followed by an anecdote about a Dylan-related anecdote that happened just today.

15 questions I would ask Bob Dylan if I could:

1. What is your creative process like? How do you come up with your songs? I've read some answers to this but maybe there's something you'd like to add but have always been reticent.
2. What are your thoughts on the state of music today?
3. What's the most important thing you've learned in your career?
4. What advice would you give to aspiring musicians?
5. What is your favorite song that you've written and why so?
6. What's your favorite song that you have covered? 
7. Do you have a favorite book? What is it and why? 
8. Do you have a favorite movie? What was your favorite film when you were a kid?
9. You've been so many interesting places. What's your favorite place in the world? 
10. What is your relationship with your fans like? I read a rather disparaging quote about this and wondered if that was an off-the-cuff statement at odds with other feelings you have.
11. What is your favorite thing about performing live?
12. What is your biggest challenge as a famous musician? Critics? Lack of privacy? Inability to just be yourself when with others?
13. Do you have a favorite memory from your career? Was it something from the beginning or later?
14. What is your vision for the future of music?
15. You seem to have taken your art (painting, sculpture) pretty seriously. When did your interest in visual arts cross over from pastime to a more serious pursuit?

Thank you, Bob.

ANYWAYS, here is that anecdote I mentioned earlier.

This afternoon I stopped at the library to pick up a Taylor Swift that I'd requested. After writing something about the Taylor Swift phenomenon last week I wanted to hear what she sounded like.

As I was checking out, the librarian at the checkout window noticed and told me she was a Taylor Swift fan, which was cool. Then she commented that Taylor Swift has been compared to Bob Dylan as a singer/songwriter. Then she said, two people (one of them from Germany) came into the library asking where Bob Dylan Way begins (right across the street) and she knew the answer because she was reading Bob Dylan In Minnesota, the new book that I'd contributed seven chapters to, primarily the ones about Dylan in Duluth. She seemed to enjoy having been able to answer their question thanks to our book.

That was fun to hear.

It's nice to get a little lift like that once in a while. I hope you heard something new or interesting or cool that gave you a lift today.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Get into it.

Related Links Bob Dylan In Minnesota Another Side of Jonathan Winters Remembering Kurt Vonnegut

Light Waves, Sound Waves, Wi-Fi and the Universe

"Beyond Imagination"

At the beginning of the film Oppenheimer there’s a scene or sequence that conveys this sense of the young physicist’s mind being blown by his awareness of the incredible universe we live in. As I watched that scene it triggered thoughts and imaginings of my own regarding the nature of reality. It’s almost strange how we lose our curiosity about the galaxies and matter and how do our minds and bodies work and where life comes from. 

I remember learning about the structure of atoms in high school chemistry. There's a sense in which atoms are like our solar system. There is more nothingness than substance. That is, we have this huge space but a handful of planets circulating within it. So, too, an atom has a tiny nucleus made up of protons and neutrons which has even tinier electrons floating around it. In other words, there is more space than substance. And this is what our bodies, tools, furniture and everything else is made of. 

One of the questions that crossed my mind back then was this. What if you could line up all the molecules in your body in such a way so as to be able to walk through a wall? Those kinds of questions are where sci-fi comes from.

In 2014 I wrote a blog post about another physics conundrum. I was thinking about all the things that surround us that we can't see. In fact, it's somewhat staggering. 

I started the strange thought that the room I'm in is filled with sound waves but I couldn't hear them. Wherever you went, if you had a the right kind of radio you could pick up a radio station.

When we were kids, my dad had purchased a multi-band radio that could pick up short wave signals from all over the world. Even though he mostly listened to WOR on the AM dial I remember occasionally tuning in to strange languages on some of the other dials and trying to guess where they were coming from. "Is that Russian? Is that Finnish?" I imagined that I was listening to a submarine captain in the Baltic Sea.

All these sounds were accessible, surrounding us, but we couldn't hear them. Nor could we see those sound waves even though they were streaming all around us.  It was interesting to contemplate.

Fast forward to the present. Think of the bombardment nowadays. Satellite radio is spraying signals continuously, and satellite television. Your GPS device signals are ever instructing, and the old fashioned network TV towers keep singing. We're surrounded by a cloud of noises we can't hear at all.

Now consider this. Science has shown us that we're also awash in light waves. We don't see light waves, of course, but only see the objects that they reflect off of. Our light bulbs emanate photons likewise invisible to perception or comprehension. The sun, too, is perpetually spraying light in all directions. Scientists point out that light is a wave but also has particle-like properties. So we're surrounded by all these sound waves and light waves we can't see.

And then there is air. Oxygen and nitrogen not only fill the rooms we sit in and the atmosphere outside, but also go into our bodies as we breathe. We can't see these gases either. It's simply amazing how much stuff is wrapped around us that we are blind to.

So here is the question I asked in 2014: What if we could see all this unseen "stuff"? 

It might be interesting for a moment, but somehow I have to think if we could see all those sound waves and light waves, and all that air swirling around, it would be a little challenging. I can envision my room here stuffed with a giant mass of shredded cottonball-like material, and myself absorbed in it. Maybe I wouldn't even be able to see this computer monitor because all that "stuff" was in the way.

Bottom Line: I think I like it just as it is, the room an empty space with an easy chair where I can curl up and read a good book.

What do you think? 

Almost Wordless Wednesday: Nevada Bob Was Back In Duluth

Nevada Bob and Friends.

A couple weeks ago Nevada Bob recorded his 7th studio album

in Nashville, backed by some of Nashville's premiere talent.

Afterwards, accompanied by photographer Gary Firstenberg,

he headed home by the circuitous route of Duluth, MN,

paying another visit to the Northland.

Related Links
Nevada Bob Meets the Beatles 

Singer/Songwriter Nevada Bob is a Storyteller Too
Nevada Bob Finishes Album Six in Nashville

Purchase Nevada Bob's 50 Years with the Wrong Woman HERE

Purchase the Audiobook HERE

Timeless Lessons from Aesop's Fable about The Fox & the Grapes

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

A Fox one day spied a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine trained along the branches of a tree. The grapes seemed ready to burst with juice, and the Fox's mouth watered as he gazed longingly at them.

The bunch hung from a high branch, and the Fox had to jump for it. The first time he jumped he missed it by a long way. So he walked off a short distance and took a running leap at it, only to fall short once more. Again and again he tried, but in vain. Finally, he sat down and looked at the grapes in disgust.

"What a fool I am," he said. "Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping for."

And off he walked very, very scornfully.

There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.

*

I've been listening to a series of lectures called "No Excuses Existentialism" from the Great Courses Series. In one of Professor Robert C. Solomon's lectures about Sartre he noted how the Nobel Prize winner made use of this particular fable to underscore its relevance for people in the 20th century, which is what prompted me to share it here.

The fable has had a variety of applications and interpretations across different disciplines, much like the four blind men who try to describe an elephant. Here are some observations from philosophy, psychology, and the success motivation field.

From Philosophy:

Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre offered an insightful interpretation of "The Fox and the Grapes." In his perspective, the fox's reaction to the unreachable grapes symbolizes the concept of "bad faith." Sartre argued that humans often engage in bad faith by denying their freedom and responsibility, choosing to adopt false ideas or excuses rather than confront difficult situations. The fox's dismissal of the grapes he can't reach is akin to individuals denying their potential and agency, blaming external circumstances instead of taking action. I think here of the proverb, "The lazy man says, 'There's a lion in the streets.'" (Prov. 26:13)    

From Psychology:

In psychology, "The Fox and the Grapes" can be associated with the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. When the fox fails to attain the grapes, he justifies his disappointment by convincing himself that the grapes were sour and undesirable. This cognitive dissonance occurs when individuals experience conflicting beliefs or emotions. In real-life situations, people may downplay their desires or rationalize their failures to reduce the discomfort of unfulfilled goals.

From Success Motivation:

According to some, the fable also offers insights into the success motivation field. It teaches the importance of resilience and perseverance in the face of setbacks. Instead of giving up after failing to reach the grapes, successful individuals maintain their determination, learn from their experiences, and continue striving towards their goals. The idea is, "Persist and you will succeed."

Except the reality is, the fox failed. For a variety of reasons. He can't carry a ladder or climb a tree. He didn't own a cell phone so he can't phone a friend.

Owning up to one's limitations is a key part of this fable. Knowing when to move on is a key part of success. On Wall Street there's a saying in this regard: "Don't throw good money after bad." The same might apply to one's time as well. 

The story is also a warning against sour grapes mentality, where people belittle or devalue something they desire but cannot obtain. Nearly everyone involved at an early age in sports -- baseball, soccer, trank & field, football, etc.-- comes to a fork in the road where they must reflect on the reality that they will likely not make it to the Big Leagues, or be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. How we handle this is a reflection on our character. 

Yes, I dreamed of being a Big League ballplayer, but it was apparent that I had shortcomings. Nevertheless, I learned a lot of good lessons from my years in Little League and on through high school. These experiences gave me insights about teamwork, the importance of practice and sacrifice, as well as life.

A sour grapes attitude can lead to a root of bitterness and a sense of victimhood. Successful individuals avoid this trap by accepting the reality of their situation, focusing on personal growth, and adapting their strategies to achieve their aspirations. 

In reflecting on this tale I find myself wanting to take a deeper dive into more of Aesop's fables... as time permits.

Here's another fable by Aesop that I've written about. The moral of this story has been a favorite of mine for ages. Who Will Bell the Cat? A Fable of Aesop That Still Speaks Today

Grapes photo: Creative Commons. © Vyacheslav Argenberg,