Sunday Thoughts

"When someone knocks on the door,

Think that he's about 

To give you something large; tell you you're forgiven,

Or that it's not necessary to work all the time,

Or that it's been decided that if you lay down no one will die."  Robert Bly, from Things to Think. Morning Poems

For most of my life, I've been told "David, you think too much."  I have never been offended by that comment. But I've never considered it to be a compliment either.   The truth is we all think too much. Brain scientists estimate that our brains make a billion billion calculations per second.  That's a lot of calculations.  I think too much and you think too much.  The difference is what we choose to think about. One thing I think about some part of every day is how small and insignificant I am.  I'm not being self effacing; it's a mathematical and  astronomical fact.  For starters, considering that the population of our planet is over seven billion people, I don't amount to very much.

Some of the things I have on my mind in the refrigerator section of Walmart:

"I live on the earth which spins in the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy is of average size in the universe. Scientists estimate that there are between 200 to 400 billion stars including our sun in the galaxy. These same scientists estimate that there are about 100 billion galaxies in the "observable universe".  So multiply 400 billion times 100 billion to estimate the number of stars in the "observable universe."  Then how many can we not see? Finally, the distance between stars is about five light years. That's about 30 trillion miles. So put all that together, the number of stars and the distance between each one.  How significant am I in the scheme of things? Did my wife tell me to get 1% or 2% milk? " 

As I'm reaching for the 2%, an activity that requires hundreds of billions of calculations,  I'm thinking,  "I hope Jarrett Stidham doesn't get hurt this season.  I would think that Auburn's season depends on him staying healthy." Now there's nothing particularly deep with thinking about college football, but I concede again that maybe it's strange to be thinking about it while making a consumer decision about milk.  But here's the thing, deciding on milk requires relatively few of my billion billion calculations, which leaves most of the billion billion available to think about something else.  I am fully capable of thinking about milk and college football at the same time.  Is that thinking too much? And at this precise moment I'm aware of my name is being called and that it has been called several times. And I hear my wife saying, "Did you get the milk?" "Of course I did."  And as I head toward the cereal aisle, I wonder if Albert Einstein preferred 2% or whole milk? He never did say.

One problem with thinking too much is that my thoughts can go quickly to dark places. It's like those five light years between stars, scientist tell us that it is filled with dark energy and dark matter. Light travels through it, but not in a way that we can see. My thoughts are as bright as I allow them to be.

I've tried to stop thinking so much, but it's as difficult as keeping the basketball from rolling into the woods behind our house. Once it starts rolling the only thing to stop it are the trees at the bottom of the hill. A billion billion calculations per second is a lot of brain power to control. I can't stop my thoughts, but I can direct them. It really is  possible to think that the knock on the door is someone here to forgive me.

Back at home while reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, I remember that I forgot to check the date on the milk. It's a little late now and besides I'll know in a few days.