Feeding My Ignorance

There are a lot of different things that trigger the thoughts that end up expressed here in the blog.  This particular post was inspired by a post on LinkedIn - I responded and then felt that it was appropriate to elaborate just a little here.

...

The question posed was:

What one thing would you tell your children that could have the profound ripple effect of changing their lives for the better.

Now - there is a good question - and my thoughts were immediately along the lines of - that's impossible to answer, there is no 'one thing' that would qualify.  However, as I read through other's posts I realised that there was one thing - and it involved a recursion on the question itself.

The thing that would change children's lives for the better is simply knowing that every decision, every choice, every action, every word that is part of their life will result in untold effects that they cannot begin to imagine.  My blog, the library and the wiki are each headed by a quote that is apt them.  However, there is one quote that I use a lot, but isn't a tagline.

It is quite true what philosophy says; that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards. Which principle, the more one thinks it through, ends exactly with the thought that temporal life can never properly be understood precisely because I can at no instant find complete rest in which to adopt a position: backwards.

This is often reduced to "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" and comes from the Journals of Søren Kierkegaard.  This I have already addressed a bit in a previous post and it also has relevance to If Only and Only If.

I could tell my children about all sorts of things that happened when I was growing up and which resulted in unexpected effects for me, for other people, and in diverse locations and times.  Choices I made had profound, life-changing, effects on myself and others - and I mean unexpected effects - often many years later, often to people completely unconnected to the original choice.

Perhaps the most telling story for my children would be to tell them of the huge range of things that happened that finally - after many years - resulted in them being born.  When I think of the number and diverse range of things that contributed to that - to their existence - it is quite astounding.  If probablilities were involved then the chance of either of them exisiting is infinitesimally small - and, I guess, that holds true for us all.

So - even if we do not fully understand it - it is surely incumbent upon each of us to live life to the full.