Because Its Here

Refining The Inspiration

When Sir Edmund Hillary was asked why he climbed Mt. Everest … he had replied ' because its there.' Its a response that provides no basis for its actions … other than the implied sense of ' who wouldn't?' Its as if … an individualistic experience of challenge … drew on the man's sense of will … and he responded with … the physical exertion of his body … to the challenge … and proved an achievement … till then … an unaccomplished feat.

Its like saying the human body is built for more than the weekly trips to the grocery … and taking out the garbage. Its an affirmation of the possibilities of our dreams … no matter how distant they appear to our person today.

In the full gamut of the creative endeavor … its man who appears as its final product … the pride of its achievement. We come to that realization today … not as a vain statement … but as the affirmation of life's possibilities. It points to the potential achievement we can create as man … in respect of the organization of our societies and the cultivation of the world environment that is congruent with the possibilities that man represents.

Our positive natures today seek such a subscription and participation in its possibilities. We move away from the obvious impressions of how things are not working … and seek to find out what we can do about it. The theoretical physicist … who thought the issue dry … is surprised to find that it relates to life … in a discovery of the suggestion that wave particles and magnetism … led to the creation of life in the universe.

Similarly … the politician … educationist …. social reformer … is surprised at the significance of their contribution … and creates the realization that in addition to what they do on a daily basis … they are also part of the creative endeavor that moves the wheels of time for its greater achievement in the future. Our realization of our bigger role comes quietly … and fulfills a satisfaction we seek … to do more. We seek a way to express that to ourselves … in the context … and measure of that contribution … without overwhelming … our experience of the ordinary … in the way we create our accomplishments.

We do it everyday … in the most extraordinary manner of accomplishment … but we have moved away from the ' shucks … it was nothing ' … and instead we hope to make a mark … with our actions … even the most ordinary. The issue is certainly one of how we are bringing ourselves to experience and express … our perceived sense of the extraordinary … beyond the isolated individualistic experience of … ' I had no idea I could do that!'

Perhaps we need a better way to describe the age we have entered in the 21^st century. On the cell and the web … we are in contact with a size of experience that we are only now beginning to relate … but yet to discover its full implications. What we offer as response today … is the sense of something much larger than we are … coming to engage us in our personal and provincial natures … and making it obvious that we are but a tiny speck of the world's experience as an individual. Perhaps that might explain much of the attitude we encounter … in the isolation of individual natures.

The Bible provides some useful lessons for dealing with this. In the story of ' David and Goliath ' … David must have appeared like a speck on the ground … in relation to Goliath's extraordinary size of being. But there in the sling in his hand … was a way that David found for expressing the new experience of the world … gravity! It brought down the pumped up image of Goliath … to realize that in the physical experience of the world … his dreams of grandeur cannot hold water.

Our present experience of the web … and the contact of the world wide community … has made many of us … world citizens … with the suggestion of roles … that far exceeds our individual identities in the environment that we live in. We find new ways to discern the experience … but without a concern for its effect … we sometimes simply substitute the web for the dreams of Goliath. It is after all everybody's personal right to do so if they wish.

In doing so we encounter something … that appears like a new trend in the thoughts of society. It brings to us a new scope of experience … never encountered before … in the history of the world … and it challenges us to refine the meaning of the experience. Whether we are ready or not … or whether we intended it … we are already in it … and battling our new inspiration for growth. Man certainly appears to be built for more things. And yes … we are doing it because its here.