Food for Thought

"Man lives on one quarter of what he eats. On the other three quarters lives his doctor."
-Inscription on an Egyptian Pyramid, 3800 B.C.

I'm going to take a moment and let that sink in. I'll be back with a follow-up post shortly.

Happy Tofurkey Day!

Don't think of this as a "Thanksgiving" post. After all, I take that notion to heart that it wouldn't be thanksgiving without the turkey, and since I'm not having turkey, it's not thanksgiving. Philosophered.

That's not to say I'm not giving thanks. So I thought I'd diverge from my normal world of philosophical musings and far too sporadic life updates to slow it down a bit with some aspects of life that make me happy. While I sit at home, slow cooking a vegan chili and getting ahead on a few journal readings, here's a list of things I'm grateful for:

I'm grateful the fact that more and more people are accepting a loving tenderness towards the wider world around them, in whatever manner they manifest that, be it through striving for peace, environmental change, or more of a small-town economy.

I'm grateful for my parents' kindness and acceptance of others; their unconditional love not only for their sons and our many faults, but towards random people that pass through their lives in the time it takes to offer a joke, a smile, or a simple courtesy.

I'm grateful for my brother's loyalty.

I'm grateful for this white Thursday afternoon and for the smells of a delicious meal in the works, a cat by my side, and friends within reach.

I'm grateful for the opprotunity to do what I love without having to worry about money or tomorrow.

I'm grateful for the potential that exists in a moment's action, and the absorbing, persistent, fulfilling nature of Life once you make that first move.

I'm grateful for wandering conversations with friends from the past that pick right up where we left off regardless of the months or years in between.

I'm grateful for you.

Namaste'.

On Invincibility

If you're like me, you survive death-defying feats about once every three days. And I'm not talking about the tightrope with a safety net here; we're talking look-ma-no-hands-watch-out-for-that-semi! Ok...maybe not once every three days. But it happens a lot. Each time, do you wonder why your still alive? Seriously, why haven't I died yet?

I think it comes down to one of two possiblities: either I have catlike reflexes and a spider-sense for imminent danger, or another JBP gets killed and out of the two of us I just keep getting the lucky draw. For example, it's possible I died twice on the way home today. In the first instance, a car turned in front of me and there's a possible world (think, Sliding Glass Doors) where I slammed into the side of the car and went flying over it (cracking my neck as I bounced once off the roof) to land in a puddle in a world-silencing "hummmphck" as the misty pavement takes on a characteristic red sheen. But I, not that guy (who, might I add, has shared in every single one of my life experiences, only separated off in his own world), am in this world. An arbitrary distinction, right? Logically speaking, for any set of compossible statements about each of my close-calls, it is necessarily true that at least one of us died in that situation and that at least one of us lived. And the kicker is, there's no distinction between me being the one or the other. True, I have causal efficaciousness to this life, but I can't cause the other JBP to do or not do anything anymore than I can call him up and reminisce about that time at band camp when I (and, hence, he)...well, you get the idea. So, maybe I am banking my own life on both my catlike reflexes and my twin getting killed. But is the fact that I get to choose if I live or die any better in the long run? Since it's logically necessary (which is much more necessary than just causally necessary) that one of us dies, I'm killing him as I apply the brakes.

Who've you killed lately?