Just when you thought you were safely nestled in a nice plateau of learning something like this has to come along and bump you off…

Actually it’s more of a welcome interruption, I could tell the engines weren’t running as smoothly as they could be. Lots of power interruptions, wasted cycles, and general confusion. But the brain is good at making anything seem normal after a while, so wasn’t everything just normal?

Well maybe not.

Today I was exploring why I didn’t get along with a colleague of mine and why it was I just didn’t have any patience for him. Was it that I was just feeling tired and low on creative energy and so was just being protective of it because I didn’t want interacting with him to use it all up?

Maybe.

But why was I afraid to use it all up? Why did I think, I of ultimate power in the universe was so power limited? Maybe to have a good excuse for why I wasn’t out changing the world more and faster and better! (‘I’m tired’ and ‘I don’t feel good’ are great get-out-of-jail free cards). So then I started to look at that. Why do I think I *have* to change the world? Why do I always feel so guilty that I haven’t done more?

Well, I guess it is an underlying world view that I have had for a long time (read a very OLD habit). It is as dear to me and as comfortable and as close as anything could be in my identity/ego. But as I looked at it, I could see, it was true it was suffocating me.

I could see that most of my life was spent trying to fix myself (gotta be perfect, gotta be perfect), trying to fix others (what is wrong with that guy anyway? how long till he gets removed from the team so I don’t have to deal with him?) and trying to fix society (I even gave an exceptional speech at TEDxNASA about how we could start too).

I instantly started to laugh. I spend so much of my day dealing with my own failings, dealing with other people’s failings and trying desperately to keep humanity’s failings from either derailing the space program or heaven forbid- following us out into space! It seemed to be all I ever did! Fight against the failings of myself, fight against the failings of others, and fight against the failings of humanity. No wonder I was so tired!

Luckily, I remembered a lesson from one of my favorite teachers, Gene Roddenberry. An episode of Star Trek where Kirk is divided in two – the good Kirk and the bad Kirk- and you think the whole time “hey, that wouldn’t be so bad, split myself in two and then jettison the bad and keep only the good!” but as the episode unwinds it becomes obvious that the good Kirk alone is missing something, he can’t make decisions or give orders and is feeling weak. Finally the crew realizes that both Kirks are dying— that they need each other to live. They miraculously fix the transporter room just in time and ‘beam’ the two Kirks back into one. The old commanding, decisive Kirk is back and when Spock asks him how to explain where the bad Kirk went to the crew, he says, “tell them that the intruder is back where he belongs and to leave it at that.”

I realized that what if I stopped fighting all the ‘bad’ inside me, and stopped worrying so much about all the ‘bad’ in others (even the guy on my team) and even stopped worrying about the ‘bad’ in humanity escaping out to the stars, or worse yet not letting us get there. It seemed strange to stop. What would I do all day? What would become of us???

I realized that in the past I had encouraged people not to fight each other but to fight entropy, after all entropy is the REAL enemy of us all right? Suddenly even that was called into question. Death is entropy and death is critical to a biosphere’s function. It is part of the design. Without it the system would not work, just like without the bad Kirk, Kirk did not work. Maybe I don’t even need to fight entropy. I started to wonder if maybe it was time to have my life be about something other than fighting.

I pondered that one as I watched strange enormous snow flakes begin to fall out my window. What would I do all day? What does the Dalai Lama do all day? I guess just be with everything as it was happening. Be compassionate, be accepting, be peaceful. It seemed a strange concept. What would I judge my self-worth on? What if people thought I was lazy? But I realized those where just thoughts of someone who was always fighting.

I began to realize that I had no idea what that life would look like and even more strangely that it was ok not to know. I am an explorer right? What better place for me then somewhere off the map… Somewhere new to explore.

What could I create or have my life be about if I wasn’t fighting? What inspires me?

What I do know is I love the beauty of snow falling, I love the sublime feeling of being connected with another person, I love the joy of exploring the unknown, and I have a lot of respect for the Dalai Lama.