Do an experiment for me. Because science involves getting your hands dirty (sometimes literally). Go for a walk outside and clear your mind. Don’t think about work or school or whatever your friends are doing. Just clear it out so you have room to appreciate what you’re seeing. Look at trees, clouds, shadows. Animals if there are any around. Flowers. Take a close look at plants and try to find insects on them. Look at lamp posts, at fences, at cracked bits of paving, at bicycles. Go up close and have a good look at peeling paint, spots of rust, chips, and cracks. Look at dirt. Look at water.

Think a little bit about how each of these things came to be there, how it works, what makes it look the way it does. In some cases you might know. Think about metal and its interaction with oxygen in the air, the exchange of electrons that leads to chemical bonding, and how that forms spots of rust. In some cases you might not know. But have a think anyway – wonder why the shadows of things close to the ground have sharp edges, while the shadows of things further away are softer and blurry. And if you find something that you don’t understand deeply, remember it when you go back inside and look it up and try to find out why.

Now when you look at the world in this way, don’t you find it more amazing and interesting and wonderful than when you wander around in a daze thinking about work or school or not missing your bus or whatever?

Cathy sent me a link to this article on Irregular Webcomic!. It’s essentially an explanation of why knowing science adds to your sense of awe and wonder with the world instead of detracting from it as (apparently) so many claim and/or fear.

The key sentence:

Understanding leads to appreciation.

Yes it does.

But it also requires a certain level of comfort with change because new understanding also leads to new ways of thinking. And that can be scary.

But there’s another critical thing here. People often seem to assume that feelings are irretrievably linked to a specific narrative. So if you’ve found or created a life narrative (an explanation that explains your situation to yourself – that makes sense of it and thereby gives you some little sense of control) that provides moments of hope, or awe, or wonder, the threat in losing that narrative (of having it proved wrong, for example) is that we will simultaneously lose those precious feelings. And sometimes it is only that hope that we will, in some future moment, feel that awe or wonder that keeps us going.

Feel lousy this morning? You can get up and move through the morning work routine because your story tells you that there will be a payoff at some point in the future. In times like those it’s really hard to give up the story – even when the narrative is itself the reason you feel so frakkin lousy (which btw is often the case).

That’s really the point underneath the article. And it is important.

Our feelings are a critical point in any narrative, but the narrative is an ephemera compared to the feeling set. No matter how awful things get, we as a species still have the same set of feelings. We do hope and awe and wonder if we are slaves or if we are masters. It doesn’t matter what narrative we construct, those same feelings will find a home within the story.

So if feelings are not a useful criteria for choosing which narrative to live by, what criteria are appropriate?

Aha! Now that’s the question.

What’s your answer? (Mine was decided many decades ago, but I really do want your answers before I reveal mine. Post them to comments here or email me mary (at) tailfeather (dot) ca