The big 'O'...

No, it's not what you think. Come on, grow up. Why in the world would I post about THAT?

No, no. I'm talking about 'originality'. The INTP's best friend.

Everything in me is hell bent on being original. I guess it's an egotism of sorts. I want to distinguish myself. I want that equation, or theorem, or 'way of life' named after me. Like Einstein, or Jesus.

The truth is, there's not much that one can be truly original about. What's the old saying, 'standing on the shoulders of giants'? Einstein had Minkowski (the guy who developed much of the mathematical framework for part of his theory of relativity). Jesus had all the other prophets who had come before him.

Originality is about as elusive it gets. You search for it. You think you've found it. But the moment you make some connection with this new idea and the old ones, you have suddenly lost it. If it can be understood in terms of the old ideas, how can it really be anything new?

Every interesting and unique idea that comes into my head eventually leaves, the result of an obsession with some 'purity' of thought.

What ever came from nothing? The physicists think it was a previous universe. The theolgians think it was God. Neither really seems to advocate a lack of something before. Something from nothing is usually just a semantical game they play. Book keeping.

No, I suppose we could never really even come into contact with something that was truly original. Something wholly different. How could we see it, hear it, touch it?

Maybe, just maybe, that something IS God. Or maybe it is a good enough substitute.

Perhaps there is the universe, and then there is 'not the universe'. It's not nothing. It's something, but something wholly different.

Is it divine? It is good? I don't know. That's sort of the point of this digression.

I know, it's a strange and abstract way to think about the world, or what is beyond it. But maybe it's necessary.

We speak of a divine mystery in the same breathe as we call God 'good', or 'humble'. What is so mysterious about these concepts? Shouldn't we speak of a divine mystery of which we can say absolutely nothing?

There is our world, the physical world, which we can learn about. Then there is a world that is something so completely different that there is no way for us to define it with our words. Even saying it 'is', might be a stretch.

And life is about the search for that thing about which we know nothing about. Every moment we are just on the cusp of touching it. Every moment it recedes farther away from us.

The theologians say we know about 'it'. It is God, or gods, and they are good, bad and ugly. Like us (coincidentally). The materialists tell us we are all there is. 'It' is an illusion, fitting somewhere into our evolutionary design. Therefore it serves no real purpose.

After all, there is no sense in speculating about things which we cannot know, which can never be learned.

But I say the fact that we know nothing about it makes it no less important to our lives than all of the things we do know.

We are not enlightened. There is nothing new under the sun. Men and women have been hunting, gathering, and procreating for 100,000 years now. They have developed laws and social norms and been happy and sad. Celebrations, wars, and everything in between.

But it doesn't matter. We are all still waiting for that contact with that 'divine mystery', be it in the form of a personal savior or the equation that will explain it all. We hope in spite of the fact that there is no reason to believe that tomorrow will be any different from today.

I'm going to press on. I'm going to look at every turn for that truly original idea. The one that will change everything we know about this world.

I live in the anticipation that somehow the journey will make up for the fact that the destination is always somehow out of reach.