The Mystery of Reality

When I worked at Borders, I used to spend my lunch hours wandering the store aisles and thumbing the pages of all those wonderful books. One day, I picked up a book called “The Hidden Messages in Water” by Dr. Masaru Emoto. It was pretty interesting, because if the evidence is credible, water consciously responds to its environment. 

The experiment was simple–just write a word on a piece of paper like “ugly”, “beautiful”, or “hate”, place it in front of a glass of water, superfast freeze it, and photograph the magnified image of the crystal structure.  The resulting photos (captured in the book’s pages) showed remarkable differences. The “beautiful” water formed organized, eye-pleasing crystals and the “ugly” water formed disjointed, unattractive ones. Even more bizarre, if you put “you fool” by a glass of water, it didn’t form crystals at all! Seemed that the water actually became too stupid to crystallize!

My first thought after reading the book was, “could water really respond to words?” Actually, my first thought was, “this is pretty crazy”. Think about it. Some mad scientist decides to destroy the world by tossing giant pieces of paper marked “hurricane” into all the oceans. Or he is less ambitious and destroys a Midwestern town by throwing “flood” into the Mississippi. Crazy, right?

I don’t think that’s likely anytime soon. However, it is possible the experiment wasn’t measuring water’s response, at all. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed possible that they were measuring the observer’s expectations. There’s some evidence this might be the case based on quantum experiments. It’s called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal.

Maybe, we just see what we decide to see. We tell water it’s ugly, and we see ugly water; call it beautiful and it responds in kind.  That’s true of a lot of things in life. If we see hate and distrust in other people, we’re likely to find it there. If we search for something positive, we’re likely to see that too. Words and thoughts have power—even when they are directed at something as simple as a glass of water.

And hey, the body is about 60% water, so I’m taping “beautiful” to my mirror and waiting for good things to happen. Instead of being what we eat, we’re more likely to be what we think we’re going to eat, or what we think we’ll look like after we eat, or……oh, never mind. Just have a “beautiful” day.

Let the Music Play

“Many people die with their music still in them.  Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live.  Before they know it, time runs out.”  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Yesterday, at about 11:30 in the morning, I felt a blast shake my house. Curious, I went outside to see what was up. Nothing seemed unusual, so I came back inside and investigated the basement, second floor, and attic to see if something had fallen off my house. Everything looked fine, and I shrugged it off.

Later, I found out what had happened on the local news. While installing lawn sprinklers in a neighborhood down the street, someone had cut into the gas line, and caused an explosion at the adjacent house. Incredibly, there was almost nothing left of the split-level structure. Even worse, an elderly woman was inside, and is now in the hospital in critical condition.

This is almost mind boggling. I feel so sorry for that poor lady, who was probably just going about her normal, morning routine.  Doubtless, there will be plenty of discussion in the coming weeks about who or what was to blame. Regardless of the outcome, the house will still be gone and the woman’s life will be forever changed. It all happened in the blink of an eye.

We never know what the future holds; nothing is certain. We live on a rock filled with molten lava that is hurling through space at unimaginable speeds. Sometimes, it’s important to remember just how fragile life is, and that tomorrow is never guaranteed.  In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, if there is music inside you, let it sing; don’t wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come.

High Tea in a Blueblood Bat Cave

Last night, I decided to go highbrow and watch Masterpiece Classic’s, Downton Abbey. I just love those English manor tales where you can practically crawl into the lush gardens, oak-paneled libraries, and draped four-poster beds. When the Lady of the Manor pulls the cord for tea, I am right there, Lady Ann, in my little white gloves and velvet hat with my ankles politely crossed, as the butler pours tea into my china cup and passes cream-filled scones.  

Well, you can imagine my horror—my sense of social impropriety– when my virtual tea was interrupted by a bat soaring over my head and almost parting my hair. … continue reading.

Gliding Down an Icy Hill on a Snowy Day: Remembering Kent Grade School

I woke up this morning to a sprinkling of snow, not much more than a thimble’s worth, but as I sit here drinking a cup of steaming, hot chocolate, my thoughts drift back to my childhood and cold winters’ mornings at Kent Elementary on Snow Days.

The school had two classrooms of four grades each. A single teacher stood at the helm of the room, conducting rowdy students with the deftness of a maestro at Carnegie Hall. Later, they opened up two storage rooms and cut the classes to two per room. Still, it was a strange environment by today’s standard. After our lessons each day, we’d just sit there coloring and listening as the teacher taught the other grades. By osmosis, alone, we pretty much knew everything for the next year and had the past year’s lessons drummed into our skulls over and over, until we could almost teach the class, ourselves.

It was a lawless, wild west, method of teaching children. During recess, we all traipsed over to Tub Temperley’s, the town’s general store, to buy penny candy, waxed lips, or cream sodas. The store was a wood frame structure with oiled floors, an ancient register, and a group of old men gathered around a pot belly stove spinning yarns. They were a fixture in most of the local towns, gathering each day at the barber shop or general store. They all looked the same to me– overalls, grizzled beards, and plaid shirts– and I sometimes wondered if they traveled from town to town like a bunch of gypsies. … continue reading.