My Brain Works the Way Life Works the Way my Brain Works
Maybe we’ve always been on the Titanic. Maybe all we’ve got to work with are deck chairs. Maybe it makes perfect sense for the orchestra to keep playing until the big boat tilts and the lights go out.
Then again, maybe it makes sense to start thinking about lifeboats.
I know one thing for sure: we should just stop beating ourselves up about the situation we’re in. Well, most likely. Maybe there’s a point in the development in each person where we need to go through a phase of beating ourselves up a bit, of frank assessment of our participation in things that we do not fundamentally align with.
Is there a way to take responsibility without taking on unnecessary guilt? Is there a way of processing what has happened and is happening and our part in it that is respectful of ourselves and all concerned?
I don’t want this essay to be list of questions or possibilities. It gets boring after awhile, even to me. And just in case there’s any readers in this essay’s future, they are fully within their rights to expect more. I’m not sure I have much more to offer right now than questions and conjecture, however. That’s where I am.
Ah, an image just came to me. Maybe it will help. But before sharing it, here’s my biggest conjecture yet, one that feels to me that a lot might be riding on: Maybe there’s a way forward via capacities we know nothing about but that nonetheless reside within us, all the time.
So here’s the image. It comes from a scene from an episode of The Simpsons that has been resonating in my mind for about 25 years. Homer befriends neighbor Ned Flanders. Ned, for his part, finds Homer irritating in the extreme but takes it as his Christian duty to knuckle under and accommodate to endure this friendship. Finally, Homer begs Flanders to go out for one last spin in his boat. With Homer at the helm, Flanders’ boat somehow becomes airborne and lands directly on top of Flanders’ car in a crowded parking lot. Still in the wrecked boat on top of the wrecked car, Homer says: “Your car? Boy, what are the odds, huh?!?”
Why is this so important?
Flanders makes space in his life for something that he doesn’t really align with, but he feels that forcing himself to suffer the destruction and humiliation that Homer brings will help him be a better Christian. There’s thus a fundamental division happening in Ned. This division results in a gap. Homer steps into the gap, the opening in the probability field that Ned has created by being divided. Whether Homer “consciously” or “unconsciously” does so makes little difference: Ned is divided and Homer’s abusive behaviors rely on this fact.
Now comes the really strange part: Of all the cars in the parking lot to land in, Ned’s boat, with Homer as captain, lands on Ned’s.
“Your car!? Boy, what are the odds, huh?!?”
Indeed, what were the odds?
On one level, life seems to be nature’s demonstration that in the final analysis, the odds do not matter all that much. Something else does. Some people survived the Titanic disaster.
“Boy, what are the odds, huh?!?”
So let’s back up a bit: Maybe there’s a way forward via capacities we know nothing about but that nonetheless reside within us, all the time.
At this point it may be helpful to start putting some questions and possibilities together again: Was Ned really a victim in the boat / car wreck scenario that involved Homer? Or did he in effect orchestrate it?
“Your car!? Boy, what are the odds, huh?!?”
Did Homer really take advantage of Ned, or did Ned take advantage of the whole situation to provide himself with a vivid demonstration of what the energetic gap he had introduced into his field was allowing into his experience?
Because, that dynamic could have dragged on and on, and in the episode it DID drag on and on, but it also escalated. And it escalated to a specific point and in a specific way that it couldn’t be ignored anymore. Not even by divided, self-opposing Ned Flanders. I think we’re looking at that same kind of thing right now, both individually and collectively, on a global scale
And about this question: What are the odds? I’d say, setting aside for a minute Ned’s specific car in a crowded parking lot getting smashed, one might imagine a lot of other things could have happened. However, something very like this happening was pretty much a dead certainty. Something this specific, this crazy, this outlandishly timed and flawlessly executed. Yep. The inner workings of the universe demanded it.
And no, it’s not just in a silly cartoon. It happens all the time. In fact, I think it’s all that ever happens, including in the composition and unfolding of this very essay in this very minute. Every single event, everything, is a “What are the odds?” scenario. One of 100 million sperm in an average release meets precisely one of typically 300,000 ova in a typical woman that just happens to be waiting for it, and here we are, doing things like pouring milk on our oatmeal. What are the odds?
And inside all of this one will find the resolution of the very questions and possibilities raised at the outset of this essay, which was followed by the strange timing of the recalled fictional scenario from a show I first saw back in the 1990s.
But hey, isn’t this my essay?
Then again, what are the odds?