OKIE IN EXILE: What’s it all about?

We begin in the womb, an environment where everything is provided for us in a place of perfect comfort, safety and peace — our Eden — and then we are, with great difficulty, pushed toward a point of light. We come into it as screaming, naked babies. Soon we get to the point where food goes in one end and poop comes out the other.

Most of us get past that stage, though some are stuck there. Fortunately most of those go to Washington, where they render each other harmless.

That one point of light we first see grows and becomes diffuse. Then as we live and experience the world, some of the images become sharper. If we are lucky, we meet others who see other images sharply, and we can enlarge our vision. The whole will be greater than the sum of the parts.  It is a system.

Each of us exists within a system as cogs in a machine. We learn to walk, we learn to talk, we go to school, and we get a job. Not a lot of thought goes into any of that because that is what everybody does. You want to eat? Well then, you are going to have to work. It’s not fun, but that’s the way it is.

Birds have to go out in the morning and get their morning daily. Bees have to gather nectar and store up honey. Each of these has to raise a next generation so that it will all continue.  We are no different than the birds and the bees in that most basic part of ourselves. If we want to live now, there are certain things we have to do, and if we want the whole, grand game to go another round, there are certain other things that need to be done.

Man seems to differ from other creatures in how we go about this. Consider, for example, Monarch butterflies. Jean has from time to time over the years been the Butterfly Lady for our children’s school teachers. Due to my many gifts in lawn care, we have a vast supply of milkweed in our yard. This is the very stuff of life for Monarchs. They lay their eggs on the milkweed and grow from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis on the strength of it.

Monarchs begin life in the mountains of Old Mexico and then come to El Norte for the summer and then head back. The butterfly that starts the trip is not the one who ends it, but they do make it back to that one special place without every consulting a roadmap or a GPS.

By way of contrast, humans are less hardwired for the world. We need help, and we’ve got all sorts of ways to keep us from veering into destruction.  I will offer religion as an example.

There are a lot of different religions in the world, but, when you get down to the stuff of basic living, the old religions which have survived look remarkably similar. They have something to say about how you deal with your neighbor, how you raise your children, and sex. In fact they spend a lot of time on that last one. The religions that are against sex entirely don’t last more than about a generation for some reason. The ones that don’t draw any bright lines in regard to it don’t seem to flourish either.

The point is that religion is one of those structures that help human beings remember how to live, how to keep going once expelled from our Eden. I am not saying there isn’t a lot more to it than that, but I am saying that at least this much is true.

At least, this is the way it seems to me.

As I said in the beginning, we first see a tiny point of light, it then becomes diffuse, and after awhile you begin to see some well-defined images. Then, all too soon, it passes to darkness again, and the same question remains: What’s it all about?

Bobby Winters is Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Mathematics, and Acting Chair of the Department of Chemistry.  He exists in a quantum state along a loop from Yates Hall to Heckert-Wells to Grubbs.