Yesterday evening a friend and I were having a conversation about Signs. Not the signs along the street and not signs that are posted in various places or locations, but Signs about what you should or shouldn't do. Are there other forces at work when things happen? I'm not sure, but as of late I feel like I've been ignoring Signs. I do feel like someone or something is trying to tell me something and until I start down the right path I am going to continue to have all these things going, for all intensive purposes, "wrong". Not sure how I digest this. I personally believe that God, fate, spirits, something tries to guide us, but since it would be just as easy to misread "Signs", I'm contemplating not whether they exist but whether I would understand.
My parents would have argued that there was nothing but yourself, at least when I was a child. My father was very staunch in his belief that we are simply animals, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, no afterlife. My mother was a very big fan of Bertrand Russell, a 20th century philosopher who made logical arguments against the existence of God. As I've stated before, my parents were not big fans of my staunch stand that since some things appear to be absolutes across all religions--from the Abrahamics to the natural religions of Europe to the earthly religions of the "New World"--it stood to reason that someone, possibly something, passed those absolutes along to all the people on the corners of the planet. When I grew up there was no internet and telephone calls via landlines could be very expensive. An hundred years ago, the fastest way people communicated with each other was via crude telephone lines, often called "party lines" and just fifty years prior that, the fastest way most people were in contact with each other was via horse riding couriers and ships. Go back centuries and often very few people could speak other languages and how did all of these things get transferred around? I'm also a fan of Bertrand Russell, simply because of the fact that his logic is interesting. However, I still believe that there must have been something or someone that passed these similarities around somehow. The probability that literally a dozen or so concepts exist in all religions almost completely indistinguishable from each other, even for the scientific mind, gives an opening to the possibility. If someone wants to define that as God, Mother Nature, fate, whatever, there is no reason to deny the possibility, and from humble observation, often a person's faith is what gives them strength. Several years ago, the Dalai Lama was asked what would Buddhists do if someone could prove if there was no such thing as reincarnation, fundamental part of the Buddhist and Hindu faiths. The Dalai Lama considered this for a second and replied that they would simply stop believing in it but "how would you prove it?" There is nothing wrong in believing in something that you can't prove isn't true. Can we prove there are no Signs?
My father and I spoke once a couple of years before he passed away about the whole ashes to ashes, dust to dust thing. He was still adamant that there was no such thing as reincarnation or an afterlife, per se. But interestingly enough, my father due to life experience said that he believed in "evil spirits". My father was a respected elder of the Chinese community and he had once argued in front of the New York City Council that banning Chinese New Year fireworks could result in bad things happening. The fireworks were to scare the "evil spirits" away and not allowing the fireworks could mean catastrophe for the City. Needless to say, they wrote off my father's inputs, in spite of the fact he identified himself as an atheist (probably at my stepmother's dismay) and ran off his professional credentials (impressive by the engineering and scientific communities' standards). The year following the ban, NYC saw it's murder rate double, and in a response lifted the ban on Chinese New Year fireworks. I'm not necessarily saying that the "evil spirits" resulted in this gross increase, and neither did my father, but my father's explanation was simple: After all his years, there were just some things that he simply couldn't explain. Spirits were as good an explanation as any. Interestingly, the year following the ban's lift, NYC's murder rate reduced back to its normal rate and even saw a downward trend. Would Signs be completely unrecognizable and unexplainable?
In current trends, we as a society, as a whole perhaps, have stepped away from certain beliefs. I mean I know plenty of people who live ugly, cruel lives who go to church every Sunday and expect that to be enough to "save their souls". I'm pretty sure that they have Signs to tell them to live better lives, but ignore them or don't see them. But as sure as I am that happens, it does make me question how well any of us recognize any Signs. Heck, many of us don't even read the signs that are actually posted, let alone the ones that are not recognizable by the eyes. How do we know what the Signs are versus say the Signs that are not "right"? If we go with my hypothesis that they actually exist, and my father's hypothesis that "evil spirits" exist, then they must have opposites. "Evil" spirits must have in counter "good" spirits. Signs must go either way--perhaps by that whole free will thing. Unless, as a friend told me once, "Signs are obvious. You choose to ignore them. Like coming to a fork in the road and missing the sign that told you too turn left to get to your destination." Obvious just like the solid sign posted instructing us that we can't park there. I can see that, but then who's posting the Signs? Fate, God, Mother Nature, spirits? Society seems to have blown off the possibility almost entirely. Google "signs" if you don't believe me. We are willing to go to church, the mosque, temple, et cetera, but do we really understand what we are meant to do or be or become? We read all the time about people that commit crimes, murders, suicide bombings, because their religion told them to. I'm sure that they believe that those are the "Signs" being provided to them, but from observations, most of those people are simply listening to another person and doing other people's biddings. Not receiving "Signs". Signs, if as my friend believes, are just given directions that can result in us missing a turn...possibly a major turn...just like those people who think going to church automatically absolves behavior they know is wrong. They keep turning wrong at the Sign, rather than right.
So, I'm pretty sure I've missed some major Signs over the last year. Partially because I wanted to miss them, partially because I had a set picture in my mind of what I thought would be best for my boys and was desperate to keep that Norman Rockwell, and partially because I've denied myself what I want for years. The harder that I've tried to keep the status quo, the more definitive the Signs have become. All of them have pointed in the same direction when it comes right down to it, but I've just tried to hold on to what has absolutely been intangible from the start. There have been little glimpses of hope, here and there, and have kept me trying to justify my choices. I'm sure that is a lot of it. I knew when a friend told me that he was moving to Savannah that I needed to consider a move. I felt it in my heart, but I denied that gut feeling. I logicked my way back to the picture in my mind. I've logicked myself over and over in the last couple of years minimum. Yet, I cannot deny that I have been ignoring the bigger logic taking all the smaller pieces and sugar coating the "bad" small pieces and trying to focus on the "good" small pieces in lieu of the "big" picture. I was making excuses and using the one bright small piece to mask over the several "bad" small pieces. Hoping and telling myself, this is for the best. There's a lesson in here somewhere amongst all the small pieces of dirt, the "bad" pieces, and I was missing it. I knew the big picture, but was trying to break it up into its components and justify one piece of good. Much like looking at a painting by one of my favorite artists, Monet, I've been taking a magnifying glass and trying to appreciate the full work. It simply isn't possible though. A Monet just isn't as beautiful, or even recognizable, up close, piece by piece. Even if trying to put a puzzle version of a Monet together, one has to step back and look at the whole picture to take the pieces and place them appropriately. I've been approaching my life like each piece is a separate entity and hoping that none of them start to intertwine, but like the Monet the whole picture doesn't come together unless appreciated as a whole. Have there been Signs for each of those little pieces that point in the same direction? Actually yes. I just was ignoring them.
Perhaps in my ignorance, I was focusing on the wrong picture. It would be near impossible to put together the puzzle pieces for the Monet while staring at a Norman Rockwell. While they are both beautiful pictures, one just doesn't suit who I am. I'm not a Norman Rockwell painting, nor would I want to be in one. Yet, the picture that I was trying to fit in truly resembled a Norman Rockwell. I am, my life, is that of a Monet. Did the Signs tell me this? Well, no, that is my assessment of what the Signs are telling me. The Signs have told me over and over, and yet even over again, that I was in the wrong place. I've been going around in circles. The one thing that I am absolutely sure of, Signs or not, is that if something sounds too good to be true then it most definitely is too good to be true. If you let it, it will suck you in, break you down, and leave you exasperated once you realize that you were going around and around in circles, especially when you look back and realize that you could've made several turns that would've taken you elsewhere. I kept turning left when I was supposed to turn right and I went around in circles until the rut was too deep to get out of. The only way to get out of those types of deep cut ruts is to have the proverbial wagon wheel fall off and start completely new. Whether God, fate, or some other mysterious intervening force, the Signs eventually became more and more dominant as I have continually tried to make my Monet into a Norman Rockwell.
How to know what Signs to follow to make your life, your painting, the art it is supposed to be instead of trying to create a copy of what you think it should look like? I once was told "Never let the head overrule the heart." I've let that happen over and over and over for some time now. Call it intuition if you like. Call it the heart. Call it Signs. I just don't know how to quantify the Signs or not to. We can logic things into coincidences, several one after the other. So from a logical, scientific point of view, the "Signs" could be logicked away into coincidental circumstances. However, again from a logical point of view, the odds of so many coincidences that seem completely intertwined while completely un-intertwined would be mathematically improbable. The argument of sheer coincidence becomes intangible from a scientific point of view simply because coincidence in itself is supposedly a scientific improbability. In proof, mathematicians have spent years proving theorems like the Lefschetz fixed-point theorem that basically shows that coincidental points are in fact fixed points. (Don't ask me to explain further than that. I'm smart-ish but not that smart.) Mathematicians then can argue there simply is no way that coincidence exists in the way that we, the average dolts, would think of it. Coincidence is in fact fixed points. Fixed points in a three dimensional time presentation...well, those little coincidences that one sees as Signs just might be a mathematical probability.
So Signs...religious? intuition or heart? simply a mathematical probability proven by some obscure theorem? Could it be argued that it is superstition or the sub-conscious mind has infinite capabilities yet to be discovered? Or, even the most scientific argument that certain fixed points are coincidence and will remain fixed from beginning to end or possibly til the end of time? Regardless, the question leads us whether we can explain them or not. Signs may be any one of those things or a combination of them. Perhaps the sub-conscious mind can process those fixed points as Signs, intuition, heart. Albert Einstein once said, "Coincidence is God's Way of remaining anonymous." If so, then I have been ignoring God's coincidences for my own logic and probably need a little more faith in what all those Signs have been telling me.
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