Some say that the greatest of all human achievements is thought. Maybe not.
Last night, I was out for a bike ride and paused to sit by the railing of a 20-foot-high seawall. Sadly, I had my nose in my phone. I was thinking about all the bad news that exists in our world today. I marginally noticed two children walking not three feet in front of me. After a moment, I heard a man say, "Please don't do that." You see, one of the young girls had slipped through the railing and was looking out over the drop-off to the sea. Young people have no fear. The man who asked her to stop her dangerous behavior was roughly 35 years old, sitting in an electric scooter with a collapsed fishing pole strapped to the handlebars. I said, "Good catch!" The young ladies obeyed my new friend's request, and off they went.
Mark introduced himself. Ten years ago, he was shot in the back and the neck. He was paralyzed from the waist down and partially paralyzed from the neck down. He had enough control to work his scooter and throw a bait into the water. He said, "Look down there. See all those little ripples? Those are baitfish. The striped bass will find them soon." All good fishermen notice before they think.
When it comes down to it, our greatest superpower is the ability to notice and to live in the present in the context of the past and future.
Mark certainly has his limitations. His scooter, though, makes him Superman. It has four rechargeable batteries that can get him 20 miles apiece. With those four batteries, he could drive that thing from Boston to Providence and halfway back. And he said his ride goes 20 mph! I didn't believe him until I saw him ripping by me to relocate to another fishing spot.
Noticing supersedes thinking. Limitations define our lives.
When Superman came into existence in 1938, he could stop a locomotive in its tracks and leap over a building in a single bound. His seemingly limitless superpowers only became interesting when we learned of his sensitivity to Kryptonite. In the 1980s, his powers became so great that the franchise almost died because the story was so boring. Only when the writers at DC Comics made exposure to the sun necessary for his survival did the character endure.
Noticing supersedes thinking. Limitations define our lives. Suffering is necessary.
One argument from the atheistic perspective is that a good and just God would never allow suffering to occur. But suffering is the yin to the yang of joy. One cannot exist without the other. From our perspective, it's easy to think that this system is the unkindest of all. Suffering is necessary. There isn't a faith tradition that doesn't recognize this. And if you're a New Englander, you come to realize that a warm June evening by the sea, noticing all the little things, would not be nearly as sweet if you hadn't been shoveling a foot of snow two months earlier.
"We join thirty speakers
to the hub of a wheel,
yet it's the center hole
that drives the chariot.
We shape clay
to birth a vessel,
yet it's the hollow within
that makes it useful.
We chisel doors and windows
to construct a room,
yet it's the inner space
that makes it livable.
Thus, do we
create what is
to use what is not."
—Lao-Tse, Tao Te Ching (translated by Ralph Alan Dale)
