Occam’s Razor

The Tree of Life

I’ve been debating with an atheist friend about life after death. She would like to believe in it but simply cannot. Too much real life experience informs her otherwise. I have agreed that no one can really know for sure whether we have an afterlife but I feel that some form of our individuality does survive death. This took us to a discussion of near death experiences. I find the evidence pretty compelling given the commonality of experiences. She thinks it is more likely that this is some sort of hallucination that happens with oxygen starvation that precedes death. In short it’s unlikely that we will convince each other either way to change our minds. But it is good that we can talk about these meaty issues in a civilized way and not start throwing things at each other.

Discussions about life after death sometimes remind me of the question of whether the glass is half empty or half full. What you reply depends on the perspective you bring to it and your experiences to date. (It is accurate to say the glass is both half full and half empty, although few can embrace such duality.) Genetics may predispose us to see the world in a certain way. Both my friend and I are clearly left brain dominant so we are by nature skeptical. It is only in recent years that I have moved to tentatively embrace ideas I once considered far fetched. I suspect (but do not know for sure) that right brain dominant people tend to be more spiritual and religious and thus are more likely to believe in notions like souls and an afterlife. I don’t think any perspective is fundamentally wrong. I think that all perspectives, even the wacky ones, should be listened to with some level of respect.

I have recently found a metaphor that is right outside my window: the tree. It may be officially winter now, but there are still a few leaves clinging to the trees outside my window here in the Mid-Atlantic states. I’ve been watching them fall throughout the autumn. Every spring I watch new leaves appear as replacements. Every year the tree gets a little bigger and a little taller. The leaves are inarguably part of the tree but they are not the tree. The leaves though are vital to the growth of the tree. In fact they provide the energy the tree needs to grow.

I am wondering if my life is like a leaf on a tree. It may take eighty seasons or so before my leaf falls off but it will fall off. During these eighty or so years I too will be taking in the sunlight. I will gather energy from other things around me: people, places, books, and bicycle rides. I gather this sustenance wherever I can find it then try to radiate it on something or someone else. For eight hours a day or so I channel it back into the livelihood that let’s me survive from year to year. But I also give some of it back in other ways: to my family, friends, and coworkers and even to total strangers by posting blog entries like this one. Hopefully I project positive instead of negative energy, and as a result of my labors I do my small part to make my world a bit nicer and more livable.

It seems hard to imagine that by putting out all that positive energy that I am not nurturing and sustaining something else. Perhaps this larger “tree” that I infer is truly me and there is the physical/temporal me (the leaf) and the spiritual/immortal me too (the tree). If I have a spiritual side then perhaps during this life I am providing sustenance to my spirit. Or perhaps I am feeding a larger communal tree of some kind. Perhaps the tree I call my spiritual self is but a branch on a much larger tree. In fact the tree of life must be enormous. It has six billion or more leaves just representing human beings on this planet.

Reincarnation does not seem illogical at all to me. In fact it seems illogical not to believe in reincarnation. One way to look at nature is to note that everything dies. But another way to look at nature is to see that everything reincarnates, or at least regenerates. So the tree becomes an excellent metaphor. Every year a tree brings forth new life and growth. Each year is both the same thing it was and it is something quite different. In fact nothing alive stays the way it is. We change moment by moment. So if everything alive is constantly changing and regenerating then why should human beings be an exception? Why should I not be the phoenix rising from the ashes over and over again? I have been feeding my spiritual tree for 47 years now with new energy. I suspect I have been sentient many times and will be back again. I will not be entirely the same next time. If I come back as a human being I sure won’t look like I do now. Just as every leaf on a tree is subtly different from each other so is each human being. Yet on one level we are all the same. We all have 46 chromosomes and come with four major appendages.

The tree of mankind may be but one tree is a much larger forest. One way to look at it is that there is a tree for every species on the planet. Trees in a forest affect each other. I am a bit enamored with the feline tree, since I have a cat to which I am much attached. I think he feeds my spiritual needs and he feeds mine. It seems all these various trees interact with each other on some level.

So while I give my atheist friend wide berth for her beliefs I don’t that feel mine are wholly illogical. Actually I find hers to be more likely than the notion that we have but one chance at eternal life so we have to get this salvation thing right the first time through. My gut instinct is that there is some logic and order to our universe and it is not wholly a result of randomness. It feels right that I am just a leaf on the tree of life.

December 22nd, 2004 at 12:55pm Posted by Mark | Best of Occam's Razor, Philosophy | one comment

Six Figures Ain’t What It Used To Be

Sometimes life’s milestones go almost unnoticed. In filling out the paperwork for my car loan this week and totaling up my income I discovered that my income alone was now just barely in the six figure range.

So why don’t I feel richer?

I always figured that if I were making this kind of money that my life would be a heap more upscale. Maybe I’d be driving a Lamborghini, but if not that at least a Lexus. Instead I have this lovely brand new but modest 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid. This hardly screams midlife-crisis babe-attracting-magnet mobile.

With a six figure income isn’t it time to get a McMansion with a three car garage? We seem content with our modest three bedroom single family home. The McMansions are all over the place in my community. It would not be out of our reach for us to trade up to a grander house. But the truth is I don’t want a McMansion. My income is now in six figures but apparently my neighbors have much deeper pockets. They have the McMansion, three cars in the driveway and a wife who stays at home and drives the children to ballet classes. But not everyone can be an executive vice president. Where do these people get the money? Am I underpaid at $100K a year?

Perhaps I could buy a vacation home, weekend getaway or timeshare condominium. But I don’t want any of them. I don’t want to spend my weekends driving somewhere to have some stolen moments in the country. I don’t want the hassle of maintaining another piece of property. I can hardly keep up the one I have. And I doubt that even on six figures that I could really afford two mortgage payments.

While I no longer struggle from paycheck to paycheck I find that my experience with poverty and struggling to make ends meet for so many years still controls my behavior. I cannot be reckless with money. I largely practice pay as you go. I won’t carry a credit balance. I typically buy used cars and keep them until they are just short of falling apart. (This new car is the exception, but even so we put $10,000 down.) As for style, I have none. I have no sense of fashion. Blue jeans and T-shirts supplied by technology vendors account for much of my wardrobe. My daughter says I need a visit from the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy folks. I have no idea how to be hip. Worse, I have zero desire to be hip. I am comfortable being indistinguishable from the crowd.

Still I have noticed the income creep over the years. A family vacation in Hawaii a few years ago would have been unthinkable at one time. It probably cost us $7000. It was paid for by extra paychecks and by dipping into savings a bit. I hardly noticed the cost. Similarly this year my wife elected to get some cosmetic surgery. The operation cost us $6000 or so. We paid for it out of savings and paid ourselves back within a few months.

Such things are helped by having low housing costs. Our mortgage payments are about $1500 a month. At one time the payment seemed obscene, but now new residents have a hard time renting a decent apartment for that kind of money. We have been fortunate in the timing of our housing decisions.

I spend money in places and in quantities I didn’t before. I give a lot more money to charity not just because I can but because I want to. And I gave thousands of dollars to political candidates and political organizations in the last election. It was too bad I didn’t get a better return on those investments.

So I’m certainly not complaining. Poverty sucked. Some part of me continues to be scared that I will be impoverished again. On some level I realize this is foolish. I have 401Ks, mutual funds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity that can be tapped in emergencies. It gets easier to spend money with every large or frivolous purchase. But I still feel the need to horde my money. I pay myself first but I often wonder why. Am I afraid to live the larger life? Or am I simply comfortable living in the trappings of a modest life even though our financial reality suggests more expansive possibilities?

I don’t know. But I often feel I should be more financially savvy. Trading up to a bigger house would make a certain sense at this stage in my life. Perhaps the class of my neighbors would improve (not that I have many problems with my existing neighbors). Perhaps the Rotarians would ask me to join. Perhaps I would feel what it would be like to be “in” or at least a member of the somewhat moneyed crowd.

But overall I sense that passing this particular milestone doesn’t mean that much anymore. There are plenty of other people in my fortunate boat and we are all trading up. This means that prices are going up, which means that my income doesn’t mean as much as I think it does. I’m doing well. I consider myself fortunate. But I still can’t see coming up with $24,000 a year to send my daughter to Sidwell Friends School, something she’d like us to do. I can’t see buying her a car when she gets her license. Although we have money set aside for her education I can’t see her in a preppy private school somewhere when a public university will do just as well. All these things still feel beyond our financial reach, or at least don’t seem prudent.

Perhaps I’ll do it if I ever reach the $200,000 milestone.

November 24th, 2004 at 01:15pm Posted by Mark | Life 2004 | one comment