I used a word recently that translates a general feeling rather than a concrete meaning. It seems every popular dictionary has its own definition, similar but then not quite and I settled for Merriam-Webster. If you (search your soul) 3 words separately they all have their own purpose but together in that order it requires a presumption that we (all of us) do have a soul and something there in should be examined. ‘Soul-searching’ is hyphenated, technically one word with the same overreach and can be used creatively. This may seem like navel-gazing but I tend to look under every stone for what may be there and this ‘soul-searching’ will take me somewhere.
Merriam-Webster: “. . . examination of one’s conscience especially with regard to motives and values.” I will cut back on the gazing but the word ‘conscience’ here links the soul with a brain function that is beyond our control. We don’t get to decide what is right (righteous) and wrong (immoral), that stuff was planted there at an early age by an influential, older someone with more experience and it unfolds without permission. One’s conscience is updated and reinforced by a continuous stream of fresh experience still, it can be stifled when competing values like greed and generosity have been nurtured simultaneously but under different circumstances. Then you lock horns over an unanticipated complication. When that happens, most of us simply default to the value that feels more ‘right’ (less wrong) in the moment. The other default is ‘denial’, to know better and behave as if one or the other does not exist. By definition again; conscience is an acquired guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior or belief.
In my case, soul searching is a frequent, necessary, scheduled maintenance on my moral compass. If I don’t go there, it is easy to get bogged down in one of those unanticipated complications. My parents did not spend much time telling us what to believe or how to behave but they modeled those values with consistent, repetitious clarity. Take care of each other, we’re in this together. Treat others as you want to be treated. Don’t be stingy, share. Take only what you can eat and eat all you take. Discipline teaches ‘right’ behavior and punishment teaches how not to get caught. I revisit those competing values, weigh and measure for what their worth and then go face the day. If there is a fundamental ‘right’ way to live then my experience tells me that in the game of life everyone should play fair. If in fact we are nothing more than high functioning animals (and I could make that argument) then poverty serves as a necessary link in the food chain. But if that curious, intelligent, creative bump that evolution blessed us with makes us not only unique but also superior and borderline divine, then there is no excuse for Poverty. But civilization likes winners and without losers, what’s the difference? The human animal doesn’t think twice about fair play. The only rule is ‘Win’ by whatever means necessary. “What’s mine is mine and if you can’t stop me, what’s yours is mine too.”
I have known families and students whose only mistake was being born at a bad time in the wrong place to parents whose sins were, when and where they were born and to who; a wicked scheme of opportunity denied and culture deprived. The bell curve works, it always has. If you are born at either (rich or poor) extreme the likelihood of rising or falling toward the middle (normal) arc of the curve is almost nonexistent. The trick is; choose a good time and place to be born and pick nurturing, educated, affluent parents. Occasionally low-born people overcome obstacles and a privileged child will stumble and fall from grace but in both cases, the farther your data point from the mid point (bell curve) the more difficult it is to slide past (statistical) normal and sustain that momentum.
I’ve been fortunate, managed eight decades of well intended, good places & right times, random good fortune and sweet people moving through my space. Sometimes things go BUMP and I try to fix what I break. So far my trespasses have been forgiven and I get to keep my good name. I have a thing about good communication and the written story. Words have power and I don’t want them to be squandered or misappropriated so I move them around on the page until they have legs of their own to stand on. When I am spent or the words lose their salt I go make sawdust or play with my guitar. When I notice people who never go soul searching or their conscience suffers from a case of arrested development I fall back on my mother’s best life lesson: There but for the Grace of God go I.
Merriam-Webster: “. . . examination of one’s conscience especially with regard to motives and values.” I will cut back on the gazing but the word ‘conscience’ here links the soul with a brain function that is beyond our control. We don’t get to decide what is right (righteous) and wrong (immoral), that stuff was planted there at an early age by an influential, older someone with more experience and it unfolds without permission. One’s conscience is updated and reinforced by a continuous stream of fresh experience still, it can be stifled when competing values like greed and generosity have been nurtured simultaneously but under different circumstances. Then you lock horns over an unanticipated complication. When that happens, most of us simply default to the value that feels more ‘right’ (less wrong) in the moment. The other default is ‘denial’, to know better and behave as if one or the other does not exist. By definition again; conscience is an acquired guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior or belief.
In my case, soul searching is a frequent, necessary, scheduled maintenance on my moral compass. If I don’t go there, it is easy to get bogged down in one of those unanticipated complications. My parents did not spend much time telling us what to believe or how to behave but they modeled those values with consistent, repetitious clarity. Take care of each other, we’re in this together. Treat others as you want to be treated. Don’t be stingy, share. Take only what you can eat and eat all you take. Discipline teaches ‘right’ behavior and punishment teaches how not to get caught. I revisit those competing values, weigh and measure for what their worth and then go face the day. If there is a fundamental ‘right’ way to live then my experience tells me that in the game of life everyone should play fair. If in fact we are nothing more than high functioning animals (and I could make that argument) then poverty serves as a necessary link in the food chain. But if that curious, intelligent, creative bump that evolution blessed us with makes us not only unique but also superior and borderline divine, then there is no excuse for Poverty. But civilization likes winners and without losers, what’s the difference? The human animal doesn’t think twice about fair play. The only rule is ‘Win’ by whatever means necessary. “What’s mine is mine and if you can’t stop me, what’s yours is mine too.”
I have known families and students whose only mistake was being born at a bad time in the wrong place to parents whose sins were, when and where they were born and to who; a wicked scheme of opportunity denied and culture deprived. The bell curve works, it always has. If you are born at either (rich or poor) extreme the likelihood of rising or falling toward the middle (normal) arc of the curve is almost nonexistent. The trick is; choose a good time and place to be born and pick nurturing, educated, affluent parents. Occasionally low-born people overcome obstacles and a privileged child will stumble and fall from grace but in both cases, the farther your data point from the mid point (bell curve) the more difficult it is to slide past (statistical) normal and sustain that momentum.
I’ve been fortunate, managed eight decades of well intended, good places & right times, random good fortune and sweet people moving through my space. Sometimes things go BUMP and I try to fix what I break. So far my trespasses have been forgiven and I get to keep my good name. I have a thing about good communication and the written story. Words have power and I don’t want them to be squandered or misappropriated so I move them around on the page until they have legs of their own to stand on. When I am spent or the words lose their salt I go make sawdust or play with my guitar. When I notice people who never go soul searching or their conscience suffers from a case of arrested development I fall back on my mother’s best life lesson: There but for the Grace of God go I.
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