Why we like what we like
My goal in writing down my thoughts isn’t to promote my views on life over other people’s; rather if we take a look at what makes us human beings we can see how precious each person is.
First off, I have to tip my hat to all the work being done in the relief effort for the recent Tsunami disaster. I hope we are all doing our part. Please find a way to give help. Sometimes I feel as if the Earth groans under the burden of supporting humankind.
I’ve been mentioning to friends of mine and also family members that my perspective on time has drastically changed over the last year or so. I often wonder about the God who created our world and why it was necessary for us to have a day-time and a night-time. Our bodies can sleep perfectly well when it is light outside, so I’m not quite sure if it was to facilitate sleeping. If that is the case, I’m willing to be wrong. If it was to help us keep track of the time, I think that’s a better reason, but technology can do that for us now. If that is the case entirely, I’m willing to be wrong. Might I suggest that it was for knowing when we are to live our lives and learn how to grow, and then when to call it quits and say ‘Boy that was a rotten attempt at living’, or ‘I really learned something today’, or even ‘I wish I could do that over again’, and then we get to sleep on it. Our bodies obviously need rest, but what happens to our minds when we rest fascinates me…
First off, apparently some of our biggest growing times come when we aren’t working; when we can sit down and shut out the world and simply meditate on our lives. If we get the right kind of sleep, our brains do this for us automatically. I’ve often wondered how rich I would be if I could invent a way for human beings to get a full 8-hour night’s rest in 1 hour of sleep. How important it is that we rest our bodies and minds as much as we work them so that we can be healthy. Apparently proper rest improves things such as memory and of course thinking patterns. The advice to “sleep on it” when a tough decision to be made comes up is probably not all that bad of advice. And of course proper sleep increases our level of energy too.
Even though this is a serious subject (or at least it is turning out to be serious) I need to mention for my own sake some things that I really like to do and why I think I like them.
The first thing is composing music. We’ve come a long way in the sense of what the average person can do to be creative these days, and computers have been a great help for me. I could never sit down at a piano and only with a piece of paper and pencil be able to come up with some of the things I have done in the past. I use as much software as I can when it comes to writing music. For those who don’t know about MIDI, it is a way for digital electronic instruments to communicate with each other. Most of our modern music productions for television and movies will incorporate this technology in some form or fashion at some point in the production stage. Why I like it is more or less trivial: I can get great results even if I make mistakes. I can sit down and record a musical lick or snippet with my keyboard and if I make a mistake, I can go in and correct the error with a click of my keyboard or mouse. Since I make many mistakes in life, maybe it’s my way of getting back at our inability to ‘re-do’ some of the choices we make. I can see my work in linear format on my computer screen and go back and review, correct and/or enhance what I have done to my heart’s content.
The second thing is software engineering. Turning a concept in my head into a technology solution that assists human beings in making their lives better to me is a very noble task, and is very challenging and rewarding. Are my concepts always right the very first time? By all means no. BUT, I then get to take my concept and design and re-work it until it is. Getting feedback from the people that I’m attempting to help is a key principle here too. I get to go back and change the things I didn’t do so well the first time and try and make them better.
Wouldn’t that be cool if we could do the same thing for our lives too? However it’s obviously not the case, and for good reason: the fact that we make mistakes in the first place is the very reason we exist. We end up being able to correct our mistakes with divine help if we are willing to accept it, yet we need to make mistakes so we can learn and prevent them in the future. Even if we can’t prevent them, we still learn however. The basic lesson in life to be learned is that we are VERY dependent upon the divine help that is offered. It is a perfect help, one that we mortal human beings didn’t do anything of our own accord to earn it; it’s a gift. If we can’t learn that lesson, then the other lessons that occur in life can end up being somewhat meaningless.
For what little of my time that I have to reflect on things, I always welcome the time that I have to just sit down and play music. I’d like to share a piece that I wrote that helps me to organize my thoughts sometimes and to help me to shut out the world when it needs to be shut out:
In closing, for all of my efforts to live the best that I can, I have learned one thing: I have not been able live my life without making mistakes, and that I cannot and I will not be able to do so without error, and therefore I need divine help. The greatest gift I have is my ability to choose for myself whether or not I will learn and grow by accepting this help in my life. (Thank goodness for spell-checkers too)