joel/is/blogging/now

My assistant, Amy, once asked me why I didn't pay attention to my birthday... My reply was, "Because it's an infantile attachment to an arbitrary timekeeping system." The reason I remember the exact words was because she immediately wrote it down... and since then we have always referred to birthdays (and occasionally anniversaries) as "Infantile Attachment Day."

I am 41 years old. This age finds me increasingly focusing on my interconnectivity with the infinite, and finding that to be a more promising and reliable source of peace than the waves and tides of the more material, conventional life. I do, however, remain connected to and engaged with that material life as well, as seems to be my nature. (I have admired monk types, particularly the Thai Buddhist ones in their golden-orange robes at their lovely mountaintop monasteries. But I don't think it is my destiny to become one, though who can say what I might be in 25 years, if I'm still here.)

Our company president, Mike, is doing a good job and things are moving forward nicely. We're making a job offer to a promising new accountant/controller today, and we are hopeful that she will join us. If she does, that will bring me a big step closer to making my presence in my company optional, so I can be more free to do other things.

I did some online research recently regarding the size of the universe. Looking at the data I could find from cosmologists regarding the observable universe, I decided to do some estimated calculations. Here is what I was trying to determine:

Let us egocentrically, and species-centrically imagine that we were going to declare the entire observable universe to be "real estate."

Let's suppose we were going to divide the "ownership" of this real estate among the currently-living human inhabitants of earth.

Let's also suppose for simplicity's sake that we were going to make a radical and revolutionary break with our current wealth-distribution patterns and divide this property equally among some 6 or 7 billion people.

What would your share of the real estate be?

By my calculations, each person would be assigned roughly one trillion stars, or somewhere between 5 and 10 galaxies.

When you ask people what a trillion is, some will say it means a thousand million. But they're forgetting that a thousand million is a billion, and a trillion is a thousand billion... or...

One million million stars, and all the planets and miscellaneous satellites associated therewith, and all the energy as well, which is a lot since I'm pretty sure most any one of those trillion stars throws off enough energy in second or two to replace all the oil in all the countries of earth.

That is your share of the real estate in the universe, one modest, fair & square six billionth of what we can estimate from what we can actually see with our telescopes. (Pretty good chance there's a lot more we will never see.) If you want to ever survey your holdings up close, good luck. In order to materially visit even one of the planets circling even the nearest of all the stars which will be assigned to you in the universal lottery, substantial advances in transportation technology will be required. However, if you are content to visit simply by means of focusing your consciousness on the idea of all these strange and beautiful places which represent the very tiny fraction of the known universe which you now "own" (and what is ownership but a curious human idea anyway?), you can travel in that manner, and that is what I am inviting you to do.

And then I can ask you, how big is your life? How important is it? How important are all your earthly belongings? How important are your power, property, and prestige? How important is the wealth of nations, all the territory on earth, all of human history? These things are a part of the infinite, and can represent the infinite in sometimes stunning and beautiful ways. So should we look after them? Yes, maybe so. But are they important enough to stress over? To cling to in fear? To hate over? To destroy or degrade in order to control or consume them? Maybe not.

For me, contemplation of these reported facts from the realm of physics and science is a gateway into spiritual contemplation and awareness. There are many others.

Now I'm off to work, where I have been warned my co-workers are planning a fuss of some kind over my Infantile Attachment Day.