There are growing numbers of people, who are increasingly perplexed with the direction that our world is going. The more we understand the deviousness of human nature, we become cognizant that this hatred, is often coupled with some form of violence which appears to be immune to any reasoning or spirituality and proclaims to have the right to literally annihilate the other person, group, community, or country!
Probably most of us have been influenced, one way or another, by a most interesting book written by Robert Fulghum, entitled: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. The basic principles are rather simple, and straightforward. generally, work great with kindergartners and just about everyone else. These principles are simple: “share everything…… play fair… don’t hit people… put things back where you found them… clean up your own mess…. don’t take things that aren’t yours… It appears easy for kindergartners to understand and follow, and we contemplate that others who are like-minded, become compliant over 90% of the time, though most kindergartners usually act better than adults. I also suspect that most of us believe that we could negotiate to 100%! However, I would suspect that the proclamation of these principles written in several languages and propelled by a single engine Cessna between Israel and Palestine (along with several other parts of our world) would most likely result in a very unpleasant experience! It wouldn’t take very long for us to realize that we are in a “world crisis”, and there is something critically missing. As I prepared to go to bed there were only dilemmas racing in my mind and my night was filled with restlessness and not a hint at a solution. It must’ve been about 2 AM in the morning that I woke thinking about an intriguing book which I read several years ago,
entitled: The Journey of Man by Dr. Spenser Wells who is an epidemiologist as well as an anthropologist. In the 90s, Dr. Wells and his remarkable team unrelentingly traveled literally throughout our entire planet formulating scientific and genetic testing which further developed a nomenclature that eventually broke the code contained within DNA as applied to all human beings. Now we understand scientifically, from a professional and well-designed research model and we all literally came from the same ancestors, and Dr. Well’s scientific research further identifies the parental ancestral pathway we share dating about 60,000 years ago which began in northern Africa.
This final journey in Dr. Wells book, The Journey of Man, took place at a remote airport where Dr. Wells and his team are about to take off on a very challenging flight to the most remote point on our planet. Ironically, Dr. Wells commented about this heroic ancestral group of pioneering peoples who traveled from northern Africa to the other side of our planet, these ancestors navigating by foot, one generation after another generation persevering for 35,000 years to arrive! Dr. Wells and team successfully completed the last and furthest journey in 35-hour flight. Dr. Wells shares that these brave human beings traversed through many very different types of country (which eventually would be called the United States!) on their way to their ultimate destination.
Dr. Wells and his colleagues discovered that each unique group of human beings, apart from every other group of human beings on earth, share a very similar DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid code with known markers A,G,C,T, which is identify from one drop of a human being’s blood, containing over 3 billion entities within 99+ percent of all other human beings, which is essentially the same in all people) with 13 minor anomalies, or markers in DNA. This brings us to a most profound conclusion: we have been created and share in life because we all come from the same ancestral parents! We have unique and distinct personalities, though quite different from each other in our interests, goals, desires, talents, abilities etc. At the same time, we are overwhelmingly very similar and like each other, in most ways. We are brothers and sisters from the same parents and the ways that we differ are minute compared to the vastness of our similarities. Perhaps it is at this time/opportunity, coupled with overwhelming scientific evidence, we may experience a metamorphosis in thought so that all human beings now understand that we are family, coming from the same parents and therefore we have a new understanding with responsibility to strive to understand and protect ALL, in our family.
If we can humbly and passionately allow ourselves to fully understand the indisputable facts of science, coupled with our own unique learnings and understanding that we possess purpose and meaning and a commitment to life itself.
“In conclusion, we might reflect on how one recovers from addiction is similar as one recover from an erroneous belief system (perhaps we are all addicts in one way or another and) is best understood in metaphor as we understand that we have two forces always pulling within us, throughout our whole life. That is force of the eagle and the wolf. Which one do you choose to be? We see the eagle flying free and high seeking the very best in life, soaring high into the mountains laying its eggs on the mountain peaks, enjoying the wonder and beauty and all the goodness of life. But there is the force of the wolf in each of us as it seeks evil and darkness, as well as power and destruction of others. It preys upon the dark side of our nature and taking away meaning/purpose of life. Which one wins this battle in us? The one we FEED!
Dr. Wells launched the first chapter of his book, The Journey of Man, in the following manner: “So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply…” Genesis 1:27-8.
Tim Lynch D.Min, PhD.
