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I Don’t Want to be the Man I Could Have Been
I want to be the man I can be
Its curious that humans not only have the instinct to survive (as do other species) but also the instinct to be significant. I’m sorry that I have such a poor reading history that I can only come up with “I think therefore I am” but its that consciousness that makes us truly human. Its human life that is precious not merely life. When a human life is taken the universe winces because its not a spark that has been snuffed against the mind boggling enormity of stars and galaxies, an entire universe is gone.
The ancients, who saw something miraculous in the black dome under which they existed, did not have a poorer view of the universe than our scientific minds in which we are convinced we are insignificant amidst the vastness of space. They, too, were aware of their limited agency within the cosmos but felt at least a place within an order in which the gods reigned. And in the stars they saw a destiny - the heavens - the domain where the gods live.
You only have to watch children to understand that we are all egocentric by nature. It is the role of a parent to harness that egocentricity to ensure that their children learn to share their universe and build common threads to build infinity upon infinity if such a concept were sensible. Ancient ontology didn’t see the gods as entirely…
