Category Archives: Philosophy

How Does Coincidence Work?

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My friend Sean, Cassie and I were talking about coincidence yesterday over some nachos.  It would seem that we all believe that strange coincidences happen to all of us and that it is kind of magical.  Like just as you talk about someone; they call you on the phone. Or just when you need something it appears as if out of nowhere.

When I was younger a friend of mine saw a hat that he really wanted.  He was dirt poor so the chances of him getting it were practically non-existent.  Later that day we were driving down the road and he saw something in the middle of the street and made us pull over.  He ran out and picked up, you guessed it, the EXACT same hat that he was looking at earlier.  It was as-if the universe had sent it to him.

In the most recent case Cassie and I had a $20 gift card to use at Safeway (our local grocery store).  We had received this gift card through our participation in the Weigh and Win program at the Library.  Anyhow, we were gathering a few items at the store; seaweed, a couple apples, trashbags,  oranges and a hand of bananas.   When we were using the self checkout we had put everything on the scale except for the bananas and it came to around $19.76.   Hmmm that’s close and we still had these bananas to weigh.   I looked at Cassie and said “Well…The bananas are going to throw us over $20 if we buy them.”  She looked at the bananas and with her out of the box thinking replied “Well..What if we buy just 1 banana?”.

You see I had viewed the bananas as one item.  I sometimes forget to use my brain and instead revert to what I am starting to call “Default thinking” which is just programming and isn’t really thinking at all.

So we picked one banana and threw it on the scale.  To our surprise this is what we saw:

safeway
A .23 cent banana to EXACTLY $20 Total

We could have picked any other banana, or checked out in any other order and it wouldn’t have turned out this way.

How does coincidence work? Is it some kind of non-local dark energy at work? Science is now seeing evidence of a “fifth force” that controls an invisible “dark energy”.  Perhaps this has something to do with it?  Some kind of quantum entanglement?

In either case coincidence needs more attention.  The next day we saw a robbery at Safeway and I am not sure how this all relates yet.  I have a feeling it has to do with helping others as the robbers simply ran out of the store with a cart full of food.  They started to throw it into their car and drive off.  These people needed food so badly that they stole it and here we have free gift cards in our pockets.

I suppose this is where religion and spirituality or just higher purpose comes into play which would be our next logical step as  humans.  We have our basic needs met and are trying now to expand into the next layer of hierarchy of needs.   Instead of thinking about the robbery from our perspective as witnesses we are now thinking about it from the perspective of the robbers and the store clerk who attempted to stop them by standing in front of the escaping car, and how we are more connected to the event than just watching it unfold.

In our pockets we had received the gift of free food.  How do we connect this with those who truly need it before they rob a store?  Apparently being on the front of the local newspaper promoting it isn’t enough.   And maybe this is looking into things too deeply…lol.  In any case life is much stranger than it appears on the surface.

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Who Are We Without Our Memories?

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This is a question I don’t think many of us ever really have to think about. We are who we are, because well, we just are. Unfortunately, this week we got to see just how closely our identity, our sense of self and experience in life is tied with our memories.

On Tuesday, Britton and I both went about our daily routines of going to work. He drove to work in Longmont and I went to do inspections in the Denver suburbs. While I was finishing up an inspection he called me and said he was going home sick and just wanted me to know. I thought that was fairly normal until he said that while at work he had felt some weird brain stuff (whatever that means) and when he came to he looked at his computer screen and saw emails he had written but didn’t remember writing them.

That worried me.

I asked him a few more things and realized it was not just emails that he could no longer remember… Thanksgiving and even the night before were wiped from his memory banks. I asked him where he was so I could meet him there and he said he was en route home…in other words, driving! I was so scared he would forget where he was or what he was doing and just drive some random place, but thankfully he made it home and my mom and I were there shortly after him.

We spent the afternoon in the ER with him as he tried to piece his day together. He said it felt like he was in one of those movies where you wake up and have to figure out how you got there. He had a working memory of only about two or three minutes before he would once again ask us where he was, what day it was and how he got there. Early in the afternoon he thought it was still 2011 and he didn’t know who had run for president this year, but at least he knew his basic identifying information and who we were.

They ran some tests such as a blood test and CAT scan and after waiting about four hours we found out that everything showed he was healthy which is both good news and frustrating at the same time. Britton had had a tonic clonic seizure almost 6 years ago, but this episode, whatever it was, was not the same. No one at his work saw him do anything strange.

Here is a short video that evening after we can home from the hospital where he is unable to recall the night before and forgets again after being told just a few minutes before:

We are going in for the EEG tomorrow, but today most of his memory has been restored. The only patch of memory that is missing is the hospital visit. He said when he woke up he thought it had all been a dream. That he had had a long elaborate dream about going to the hospital. The twist of course, was that his “dream” was what we all call “reality”. Very trippy.

Britton says his mind keeps floating to long-ago memories of his childhood which may be a sign of his brain/mind trying to sort through the tangled mess and put it back together. He has needed a lot more sleep and someone (me) to watch him and is on driving restrictions for a while.

It really makes you appreciate some of the things we take for granted like our memories and our friends and family. It was really scary when Britton couldn’t remember our anniversary or Thanksgiving. All the memories we have together. It made me feel that philosophical question I posed of who are we without our memories? We don’t really exist unless there is some record, even in our own minds. I think, therefore I am. But more than that, I remember, therefore I was.  I can see why stories and movies like The Notebook, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memento even The Hangover or 28 Days Later, explore this theme a lot. What if our waking reality looked more like a dream? What IS reality, really?

While these questions are great when they are simply philosophical exercises or from entertaining fictions, it is much more difficult when we are confronted with actually dealing with them. We are thankful that Britton is “logging” memories again and able to access nearly everything except the day before yesterday. We are hoping that we can get to the root cause and sort this all out so we can continue to make -and keep!- many more happy memories.

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Senioritis -Our Elective Year

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The beyond

Do you remember your senior year in high school or college? How you were so ready to start your new life? How you felt on top of the world as a senior, but also ready to make the jump into the unknown world beyond? Well, that’s what it’s beginning to feel like this year here in Colorado. We are nearing our one year countdown and the weather today is cold, rainy and cloudy.

While I can get carried away in the feelings of autumn: cooking chili, drinking hot tea (instead of cold tea), changing the sheets to flannel and lighting up the fireplace once more, I am also getting those senioritis pulls of wanting to just GO!

We are pretty much ready to move to Puerto Rico. Like completing most -but not quite all- of your credits in school, we have enough money saved up to move, but we are just saving up a bit more each month to pay for various projects (like our deck) and hopefully get a little more in rental income. All these extra and elective “credits” will better prepare us for the world that’s to come. But it’s still so hard to keep making the trek to “school” every day. What’s the point in getting invested in the outcome of something you won’t be around for in years to come?

In addition to senioritis, this “senior year” also makes for some interesting conversations in our house. For example:

“Should we start thinking about getting a new car? The Honda has almost 300,000 miles…Oh wait, Puerto Rico…On second thought, I think we can make it one more year.”

“What if Schnoodle lives another year? What are we going to do with her when we move?”

“I don’t want to get any socks ( or coats, or sweaters, or blankets) because I won’t need any in the tropics.”

“Should we take SCUBA lessons now so that we are ready when we get there?”

“How much do you know about boats?”

“I wonder if I should get my commercial pilot’s license or just a check-in with a flight instructor…I should talk with them about flying over water!”

“We should probably get together with _____, because we may never see him or her again after we move.”

For every item in the house: “Do you think we should sell our _____, give it away, bring it, or leave it as part of the rental of the house?”

“How much do you think we can rent out our house for?”

“Are we missing anything on our Colorado Bucket list?”

Et cetera, et cetera.

It’s kind of a strange feeling knowing you are going to leave. A little unsettling. A little exciting. A little  “devil-may-care” attitude. In a way it sort of reminds me of talking with my dad when he knew he was going to die. Of course, we don’t know -at all!- what he was going through…but certainly he was preparing to leave the known and that made sweating all the other small stuff seem silly. And that is about as close a comparison as I can come. We are preparing to leave the known, the routine, the comfortable in exchange for an adventure in the beyond!

And like preparing to leave this world, as you can tell by our conversations, we have begun to think of all the other electives we want or need to do here before we leave. To get our affairs in order, so to speak. I remember the seniors when I was just a freshman in high school who had a “will” written up and they bequeathed their witty, ironic knowledge and funny items to the lower classmen. And in a similar way I have been thinking about all that I want to “will” to my friends and family. It’s going to be hard to leave this all, and yet, I am so excited about what’s to come!

This senior year will be fun in its own way as well. For you never really see your world until you are just about to leave it. And you never forget your senior year, senioritis and all.

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Trip to Meeker and the Western Slope

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My mom, brother and me in Steamboat on our drive through the mountains

We just got back from our trip to Meeker, Palisade and the western slope of Colorado. While in many ways it was a lot of fun, it wasn’t all easy. For one thing, we were visiting my dad’s grave, which brings up so many memories and thoughts of what could have been; what would be now, if he were still alive and well.  But it was also difficult because my mom, my brother, Britton and I are all such different people, on different paths in life. Britton and I are of course on a closer, more similar path, and Justin and my mom are also since they live together, but still, anytime you have four grown adults with different experiences, lessons to learn, opinions, and viewpoints on the world all in one car and in one hotel room, you might be a little uncomfortable.

All in all though, I think it was so important to do this trip. When Britton and I move to Puerto Rico, there just simply won’t be as many opportunities to spend time with our families and friends here in Colorado. Sure, they may visit and we may visit, but it just won’t ever be the same. So I am glad we did this trip.

We started our journey mid morning going through the Poudre Canyon. We wanted to see how much the fire had ravaged the area. In fact, it wasn’t too bad -near the road anyway. Although we did see a few blackened trees. Oddly enough, it was really hazy the whole trip, though not from any fires in Colorado. It all came from states surrounding us. It was unfortunate because it blocked some of the views. After driving through the Poudre, we stopped in Steamboat Springs for lunch and walked around a bit.


The view from the Meeker cemetery

We arrived in Meeker around 5 or 6pm and checked into a hotel. Then we headed up to the Meeker cemetery called Highland Cemetery where my dad is buried. We spent quite a bit of time there. It was powerful and emotional. And very beautiful. I can see why Dad chose this area -not only because he was born there and his mother and father are buried there, but also because of the sheer beauty of the place. It sits on a hill that overlooks the river that runs through Meeker with a backdrop of the mountains.


An angel carved from an old pine tree


Dad’s gravestone. Though he never actually went to Vietnam, he was apparently classified as having served in that war.


We also found my paternal grandmother and grandfather’s headstones. Iris is my middle name in reverence to my grandmother that I never met


In the cemetery at sunset


Meeker is a very small town of less than 3000 people. Agriculture- such as hay and sheep- is the main industry. Interestingly enough, the founder, Nathan Meeker, also founded Greeley and after being scalped by Native Americans in this area at the Meeker Massacre was buried in Lynn Grove Cemetery in Greeley!

The next day we headed out to Palisade for the peach festival, but found out that the festival really didn’t start until Friday! But anyway we were able to take some of the agri-tours around. We stopped at an Alpaca Farm and Mill where they make yarn from alpaca wool. We also stopped at some vineyards and wineries as well as fruit orchards.


At the Suncrest Alpaca Farm in Palisade


We learned alpacas are from the camel family and prized for their hypoallergenic wool


They had an extensive set-up to produce the yarn and final clothing products from the alpaca and other animals


Some people call this area the Provence of Colorado with all of its grapes, lavender and fruit orchards.


Wine Grapes


My brother and mom enjoying a wine tasting


Britton and I in our favorite place -in a jungle of trees. In this case it was a peach orchard


Gorgeous peaches. We didn’t bring any home because we were peached out from our own tree


Britton and me with a sculpture and the Grand Mesa in the background

We were planning on staying another night, but after our tours we decided we had done what we had come to do on this trip and started back to Greeley about 5pm. We took I-70 through Glenwood Springs, Vail, Georgetown etc. It was a nice drive. We arrived home at about 10pm.


Driving on I-70

All in all, while it was emotionally draining in many ways, it was also a lot of fun and I am so glad we did it. Thanks to Britton, Mom and Justin for going on this adventure together. And thanks to Dad for making it happen in a round about way.

 

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