Questions are what make us human

As I arrive in Los Cabos for a family gathering, and ponder the recent talk of border walls, and keeping people out and keeping people in, I reflect on all my travels around the world and wonder…why do we humans have such a problem with different people? Different from what? Us? Our skin? Our language? Our beliefs? According to whom?

I love diversity. In nature, it’s beautiful and intriguing. But with humans it is not always valued. I love learning about other people and their cultural heritage, their celebrations, their rituals, their food, and drink. I embrace curiosity. Then I don’t have to be right or wrong…just curious.

Why are humans (mostly governments or those usurped by them) so destructive and violent? Why is there war continuously? Why is peace such a challenge? Is it too boring? Too fleeting? Why is collaborating on resources and things people need for basic living so ignored by many?

Why do we see today the rain forests diminishing, the coral reefs dying, the glaciers melting, storms increasing, droughts emerging, and oceans rising? But we mostly are ignoring what science and our own perceptions tell us. Why cannot countries work together in better ways to solve the mutual and global problems challenging life as we know it?

Many have called me an idealist, and some readers of this will call me other things, but I don’t mind being an idealist. What is wrong with having ideals? Why would that be a bad thing?

Our American experiment in designing and creating a new country was based on ideals, many of which have been diluted it seems in current times.

I don’t have any answers. I have opinions, just like all of you. But that is all they are… opinions…sometimes based on facts, but whose facts? Who do we believe? How can we play a role in such a big machine?

Many of the wars (if not all) are about religion and whose God is right (and they are also to obtain the resources of the other country and quest for power by rulers).

What would God say to that? How would you know? To me, God is a mystery, and I celebrate that mystery of not knowing, but still believing in something greater than myself. I believe in a creative force in life’s beginning, and I believe in a consciousness, a force, an energy, a God if you will…but no religious text will tell me the answers…they all come from an attempt to explain and create rules and are written from the reporter’s point of view of the stories told, the events witnessed, or the myths revisited.

Why can’t we just celebrate the mystery and discover how all peoples do that? Like pieces of an intricate puzzle, maybe when all are looked at and with new eyes, then the pieces fit together. Or maybe it just looks more intriguing. And then we can just keep asking questions, because the answers are usually just opinions or conjecture, and I can be comfortable with not knowing. Because in that I am right.

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