Earlier this week I read an essay by Edward Hoagland entitled "Heaven and Nature." In this essay, Hoagland discusses suicide -- I know not necessarily the subject one wants to contemplate at length -- but anyhow, what really caught my attention was the final line of the essay:
"Man is different from animals in that he speculates, a high-risk activity."
Made me wonder, is our tendency to think, especially to overthink, one of the reasons we can become so morbid, so depressed with out lives? I've been chewing on this thought all week and I have yet to come up with an answer. Of course, that means I've been speculating, the very activity Hoagland seems to warn against. Still, I find that I am not willing to believe that mankind's tendency to think long and hard about all sorts of things, to speculate about the world we live in, is one of our more endearing traits. Yes, a person can takes things to negative ends, finding only the worse in live but I will continue to believe that it is that need to speculate which has created some of our greatest achievements. Without speculation, Salk would never have discovered a vaccination for polio and people, like one of my grandmothers, would have continued to suffer from the painful effects of the disease, provided they survived at all!
So, men and women of the world, speculate away. Just remember that we must always seek a greater level of understanding, of oneness with our universe -- it is time to stop trying to make one more dollar and start taking care of that which we already have. I know, old idea but I'll keep saying as long as I have breath to breathe.
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