Apologies to anyone who immediately thought of the song.
This meditation isn’t about the Disney ride or buying the world a Coke. It’s not about randomly encountering an old friend at an airport or in a big city either, as exhilarating as that might be. It’s not even about spending time with children, who often make our lives brighter just by being around us. I am concerned with what is inside our heads: a world that can be infinitely large or woefully cut off from what lies outside.
Never before have humans had access to so much knowledge. And never before have we had such power to misunderstand our world. I’m not going to say life was better when all we had to do was step outside the house to get a larger view of the world, but sometimes it feels that way. I’m old enough to remember the words, “go out and play.” And coming home before it got dark. That was before computers and smartphones. TV had only just begun providing a bigger window on the world when I was born.
Before the advent of the world-wide web, if a person wanted to experience a larger world, they could listen to the radio, watch TV, read a few books, or peruse National Geographic photos. And one could travel. My father visited at least a dozen countries in his lifetime. So have I, with more to come, I hope. There is no better way to make one’s inner world larger than travelling in a spirit of learning and respect.
Now, anyone with a smartphone has access to the world – even parts of it that they probably shouldn’t visit. Yet, while the potential is great, our inner world can still be small, restricted by our preferences and prejudices. What we learn on our tablets and phones is up to us. We can choose sounds and images that someone else has pre-selected to keep us uninformed, fearful, and angry, or we can seek out the wonders of the world, the triumphs of the human spirit.
Practically unlimited information about life on an 8000-mile-diameter sphere (and it is a sphere!) can be found on 3”x6” devices. The trouble is humans have always been more comfortable within a few miles of home. It’s natural to understand our world locally. Even if we can see what’s happening on the other side of the planet, it doesn’t seem quite real. Our complex informational world isn’t an easily comprehensible world. It’s often too much to cope with. Our minds were designed for a village or a family.
It sometimes feels futile to think about life elsewhere, even in different parts of our own country. Thoreau said, “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” It seems to me if we can hold a computer that was once room-sized in the palm of our hand, we must be committed to understanding what is important to others. Otherwise, what is there to communicate? Otherwise, our inner worlds will remain small, even if we possess the gateway to all knowledge.
“Ask, seek, and knock…” the master said. Now we can, on a scale that defies thousands of years of human expectations. And yet, our inner world can only be as we want it to be. If we want our small devices to bring us a larger world, they will. If we want our world to be no larger than our preconceptions, that too is possible. Just as a telescope can bring far objects closer, and our little computers can bring the universe to our fingertips, our challenge is to understand a large world as if it were a small one. So, maybe the song is helpful after all.
MurrayWorks 