Life Is An Adventure

One of the most amazing evolutionary developments in humans is our mental capacity of self awareness. We are conscious of ourselves as individual personalities in relationship to other human personalities. To varying degrees we can be conscious of the me within. Living becomes a personal experience. At the same time, we share with earlier forms of animal life many of the earlier evolutionary developments of basic survival instincts, tribal instincts, and fears of the strange or unknown. It is these self protecting animal instincts that are still so strong within us that gets us into trouble. I have come to believe that this is the source of all the evil that we experience in our world; it seems to me that evil is a uniquely human experience. Evil is the result of humans letting their animal instincts take over with feelings or even urgings of distrust, anger, resentment, revenge, hate, murder, and even war! Evil is not from some external Devil, but is the result of what we humans do to ourselves, to each other, and to other life – even to the Earth itself!

But the evolutionary development of our brain’s frontal lobes gives us the ability to control those animal instincts. It is our self awareness and ability to recognize self awareness in others that can create compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and love. But it is our choice. We humans are very early in our evolutionary development, so it is not surprising that our animal instincts are still so dominant. Yet it is our ability to love that is our hope for us as living individuals on this living Earth in this still evolving Universe .

For each of us, life is an experience. It is an experience in time. It is an experience that include risks such as tragedies and even death from natural events like earthquakes or lightening. These events used to be – and often still are – identified as punishment from God. But in nature there is no punishment, only consequences. Other risks are the result of what people do to other people or to our planet. They can be either good or evil. An experience that has risks, known and unknown, is called an adventure. So the experience of life for each of us is an adventure. An adventure can be exciting, thrilling, dangerous, with new discoveries, free decisions, new relationships, peaceful interludes, random happenings, as well as tragedies, hurts, and pain. The adventure of life can have all of these.

For me my life is a gift of love from God – a gift in trust that I may use and then give back. I am an integral part of the Universe that is gradually being revealed to us humans as continuing creation with expanding and changing galaxies, with stars and atoms, energy and love, And through it all we humans are part of the evolving life on our planet Earth to which we humans are so intimately related. My life has been and still is an exciting adventure. And at 92, I now am understanding it, more than anything else, as an adventure in love.

Loren Bullock
March 11, 2017