Questions

Questions

Questions, they play a really important part in our lives, don't you know?  I've only recently been reminded.how important they can be (or is it are?).  Most of the time, when I see someone who is really out on a limb, or acting irrationally, it's because they have lost (or never had) the capacity to question themselves and their beliefs.  How valuable is that ability?  We look at life based on assumptions most of the time.  Beliefs we take for granted, things we've done out of habit.  But do we stop and think?  Not to pick on Muslims, because one of the beliefs I've been questioning is whether Muslims are wrong about most things, but ask yourself how a man (or a woman) who is parent of a girl about to be raised a Muslim accepts the notion that this child must be second class, hidden from society, subjugated because she is a female?

Now, I'm thinking that I might be getting lazy.   It's easier to amble through life not stopping to think over the things we take for granted.  Why do I think it's OK for me to spend most of my time taking care of me, and not really worrying about anyone else (most days)?  It really can preoccupy you, you know.  You just get all wrapped up in yourself.

But, you have to wake up some morning and question the importance of "taking care of yourself" first.  Try another priority.  Should the one you're doing almost without thinking be set aside now and then?  Maybe these are not the examples that grab you and make you question your assumptions.  They just happened to come to mind for me when I realized that some habitual thinking on a more personal level was carrying me in a direction I thought I'd never go.  Sure, I caught myself, and changed course, but it reminded me to question myself once in a while.  Is this really the path you want to be on, the thing you should be doing?  Or are you just in the habit of thinking this way because of some assumption you accepted or developed along the way as a shortcut, instead of asking yourself the hard questions.  I'll keep my eyes open for some better examples, but in the mean time, I'm going to be asking questions.

What Surrounds Us

Watching the water sparkle as the sun wanes, and a breeze begins, I wonder how this show looked long before we were here.  In 1663, when William Hilton sailed and lent this headland over looking the marshland that made up the land mass in that area his name, did he watch the water sparkle or was he busily studying what charts he had to find a way back?

What Surrounds Us

I've read a bit about Columbus and his three (or was it four?) trips more than a century earlier from Spain to what was termed Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic).  To me his ability find his way back in a tiny boat using the stars to guide him is nothing short of a miracle.  I can't help but think methods and tools for navigation had changed much between the early 1500's and the mid 1600's.  Not like today when we moved from detailed charts buoys and lighthouses to GPS.

Captain Hilton, a resident of Charlestown in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was twice commissioned by merchants in Massachusetts to explore and map the Carolina coastal land.  During his second trip aboard his ship Adventure, he spotted a headland which he used to mark the entrance to the Port Royal Sound.  This headland later became known as Hilton's Head and the island on which it stood, Hilton Head Island.

 As a longtime sailor and explorer, he probably wasn't struck by how the sun danced on the waters the way a city boy from Illinois is tonight.  The tide is coming in, lending motion to this water that the slight breeze lacks the strength to provide.  An old man trudges past with his tiny dog and stares in at us.  He too seems immune to the charms of the light dancing on the waters, finding us more fascinating for reasons I will never understand.  We've waved at times, but he seems not to notice, so perhaps he doesn't see us at all, and the faraway stare is really fixed on some memory or other.  I can't believe it's all that pleasant--his brow's too furrowed for that.

All too often we all seem to busy ourselves with other things and forget to take in what surrounds us. That probably goes for the people in our lives as well.  Probably ought to get in touch with some tonight....