Forward From My Upcoming Collection Of Essays
I am a scientist through education and profession. I’m a wildlife artist and photographer through passion and decades of practice. And finally, I’m a lifelong student of philosophy and ethics. I must know how some things work to accomplish many of the tasks that I do in my day job and in my art. But here’s the rub — the more you learn, the more you should come to know how much you don’t know. Mostly, I don’t know squat. As a matter of fact, the number of degrees someone holds often doesn’t matter. The most formally educated person on this planet, relative to all there is to know, in fact, knows little.
In the essays that follow, I’m thinking out loud, so to speak, and sharing those thoughts. I’m questioning my thinking. I can be wrong, and as long as I continue thinking, seeking, questioning, and discussing, I probably will be wrong on many occasions. I freely and enthusiastically admit that. These are just my thoughts now, as I write, or at the time I wrote them. They are a chronicle of part of my life and what goes on in my mind as I ask myself the question “How should I live?” I expect that many of my assessments and conclusions will change with knowledge and experience.
Just think about that for a minute. Our finite minds can only grasp so much. We are bound by limitations, just as we are in our five main senses. The human eye cannot see the entire spectrum of light, and the ears cannot hear all there is to be heard. Those facts alone should be indicators that our personal experiences are not the experiences. Our perceptions do not even approach being all-encompassing universal truths, and we’d do so well to remember that.
So, what’s my point?
We obviously have some level of intelligence. We just launched another rocket into space. That takes something. But look at the night sky, my friends. It is full of billions upon billions of stars, and while it is natural for us to be the star of our personal stories, clearly, one look at that sky, knowing what those lights up there are, it stands to reason that we aren’t the central character in the story of The Universe. We are small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. And yet our lives may be filled with meaning. They can be rich and fulfilling with deep connections and wonders that seem magical.
Now I’m not really talking like a scientist, am I? Well, there we go. We need to categorize. We do that. As a tool, it helps us accomplish a great many things. But it also limits us. Our categorizations can become prisons for our minds and spirits.
The little knowledge that science has provided me has only instilled me further with absolute, abundant awe at the sheer grandeur of this life. Knowing how a few things work, or how they came to be, only magnifies my wrestling with the questions of how to live this spectacular time that I’ve been given.
I’m not here to write some dry academic paper and ensure that everything has a proper definition and a citation. I’m talking to you over coffee. I’m documenting my musings about ideas that I care about in my human experience, just as I do in a blog. They are things that I hope you can come to care about too, because I feel that we are in a critical time, a turning point, in the history of our species, and our planet.
This book is a collection of essays, mostly dealing with what I call spiritual ecology, for lack of any better categorization. They are mostly from a blog that I’ve written over a number of years, so some are inherently dated, and they chronicle part of my life and experience. They own and express the awe I feel when meeting the eyes of a wild animal or when looking at the stars. They acknowledge those chemicals in my brain and body and how they impact and inform my life experience while under their influence. Awe, gratitude, and wonder affect me like I would imagine recreational drugs affect those who prefer them. I use the word “spiritual” in this sense. That’s a personal choice and not intended to meet some professor’s academic definition of the word.
I likewise don’t mean this in a supernatural way. I would not say I believe in a “super” natural. What is a part of nature, from a subatomic particle to entities in space that I don’t even know of and cannot even fathom, are all natural — not above or beyond the laws of nature and physics. That being said, do I think we have comprehensive knowledge of every law? Absolutely not. We know little.
I’m a Homo sapien in the 21st century, and we all know what that means regarding transportation, energy, and infrastructure. But what about — dare I mention it — the animal that we are?
Yes, we are. It took a lot of trial and error, eons of evolution to bring us here. Oh sure, I could look at it from an objective, scientific point of view only. But I choose a different approach, quite simply, because I feel it deeply, and I’m not one bit ashamed of that. I don’t crave living forever, or unnatural extensions of my life if I am not experiencing a good health span, and I don’t long for an afterlife. I’m not concerned about what happens later or “being gone.” I’ll see soon enough, or I won’t. What concerns me is now. Because you see, if there is a god or if there isn’t, how I live matters to me, and since I know it impacts other life-forms, something about this very idea — that it matters to me — says something about human evolution and the potential of the human spirit.
I think we care. And we can care more. And we can evolve into better human beings. Better animals. And a better species.
The cycle, the time that has brought me to this place on this day, is sacred for me. Being here on this planet, at this time, is a privilege, not one moment of which I take for granted.
I am filled with awe and gratitude every day, knowing that I share the earth with other plants and animals, all related to me. Yes, I mean spiritually, but I also mean factually. “Spiritual” is not factual in an objective sense. For me, it is decidedly not related to an organized, defined religion. It is my personal, very subjective experience. It is not something I can or would even desire to prove. It’s a quiet space within me that I keep for myself. A silent, sacred space that words would defile. In fact, essays notwithstanding, I really don’t like to attempt to speak of things that are incredibly special to me, as words seem inadequate. I feel like I grasp to describe moments that can’t adequately be described — like the moment my eyes met a grizzly bear’s. Anything I attempt to say falls short, in my estimation. I try to use my wildlife art and photography to fill in as many gaps in expression as I possibly can.
On the factual, objective side of things, I know that I’m genetically more related to the chimpanzee than I am to the banana tree. But I’m still related to the banana tree and am a descendant of single-celled organisms. Like it or not, you too, are a part of the circle of life. The modern world can fool you into thinking you are top dog, because it appears that we humans have developed ways to annihilate not only ourselves, but to destroy whole swaths of other beings and environments. That kind of power can be deceiving when it makes you think you aren’t dependent on the health of the natural world and her other denizens. That’s a fatal flaw if we continue with it.
I would suggest that embracing this fact of dependence on the health of the natural world, asking the questions, and caring about the grand process that brought us here can be health giving, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I really believe that asking who we are and reconnecting to our primal roots as natural animals, can help with what seems to be an epidemic of existential loneliness and a feeling of uselessness in the modern world. I’m not suggesting that you need to chuck everything and go live under a tree in the woods, shunning technology and some advances we’ve made, although I do think I’d prefer a cabin in the woods away from the city and crowds. But let me not digress. If you read along in the different essays, I hope to convey in some small way, a bit of what I am trying to say.
I hope you’ll enjoy the journey through my mind as a human animal, a spiritual animal that for some reason seems to care how it lives.
Elie Wolf, Homo sapien
Orlando, FL
2024
