Take the Plunge

        Growing Through Life

“...don't just go through life—grow through life. It will be easy and tempting for you to arrive at reflexive answers—but make it a point, instead, to acknowledge mystery and welcome rich questions—questions that nudge you toward a greater understanding of this world and your place in it.”

Nipon Mehta

I read this quote on my friend, Cathy Haven Howard's website yesterday, and knew I wanted to blog about it. It seems to me very few people live like this—asking the big questions of themselves or others. Our political campaigns are a case in point. We've been listening for a year now to the candidates endless talking points. They yammer on saying nothing concrete, criticizing one another, telling outright lies, and when they're caught, acting like someone else is at fault. No one ever asks them, 'What is your personal guiding principle?' 'What's the last thing you think about before you fall asleep at night?' 'How do you decide, not what is prudent, but what is right?'

'What keeps you from saying, 'I don't know', when you don't know?'

I once had a friend say to me, “I just do better when I don't ask those questions,” as though it hurts your brain to think thoughts. I believe our very reason for being here, we humans, is to push the boundaries of the known to reveal the mystery, and then push some more. Otherwise, why did we develop self-consciousness when no other animal did? Why did we develop these big, complex brains if not to use them? I'm not saying that one should sit like 'the thinker' and worry, but I am saying think twice before you open your mouth and blurt. Quest. Search out meaning and unearth more questions and find the answers for yourself. To do otherwise is to skim along the surface of life without discovering the richness in the depths.

Have you ever watched a kingfisher hunt? He flies high and fast and then dives, screeching his sharp song, and plunges in like a torpedo. You'd think it would snap his neck, but moments later he comes flying out of the water with a silver sliver in his powerful beak. Live like that...don't be afraid to take the plunge and ask the hard questions.

In the spirit,

Jane