One Solution

Answers. Everyone seems to have them, including me. It seems fitting that I have the answers; after all, I am the centre of my existence. Relative to my perspective, everything revolves around me. Such is the case with you and everyone else, hence the vast sea of answers in which we find ourselves afloat. Which one is the solution, I wonder? Is there even such a thing?

Let us travel back in time - wwwwwaaaaaaaaayyyyyy back - to the dawn of, well, us. Here we are, meandering about in this strange place with all sorts of strange things happening. How do we make sense of it all? What is causing the air to feel cold/warm against my skin? What unseen force is responsible for these plants I am eating? Why does water periodically fall from the sky? Why do I feel cheerful one day and horribly depressed the next? Why is my neighbour cross with me? Why am I even here? What am I supposed to be doing? So much information whizzing past us so quickly... how can I possibly comprehend?

Over the years, decades, centuries, millennia, we sought answers to these and other questions. Luckily, some of us seemed to figure everything out, much to our delight (and relief). To this day, people approach us, claiming to hold the key to unlock all the mysteries that leave us obfuscated, frightened and alone. For me, it was a story of a man who dwells in the heavens, who created us in His own image, who sacrificed His only begotten Son because He loved us so much, who unleased hellfire and brimstone on those who did not believe. For me, the only way to salvation was to follow the Son and no one else... but wait, I'm standing in the centre of a crowd of "believers" of several schools of thought. Are they all wrong, save for the one whose solution I was taught as a boy? Wait, is my solution wrong? Have I been misled? Have I been wrong all along? Why do certain people believe in more than one mythical being? Why so much variance in the names and practices?

Let us return to our being drop-kicked into this wonderful, magical world so full of activity. Seeing as how, at the individual level, we perceive ourselves as the centre of existence, surely, we will each interpret what happens by our own respective means; that is to say, we will be exposed to our own respective streams of information that we will process accordingly and seek to share our conclusions with those around us. The result was a divergence in beliefs: some of us had different interpretations than others and bestowed our knowledge upon our respective tribes, who then passed said knowledge down through the generations. Over time, of course, new interpretations manifested among the masses, and the process was repeated.

But what is happening now? So many of us who interpret the world in a given manner are now exchanging knowledge with one another, and what are we discovering? Our "unique" perspectives aren't so unique after all! Convergence! We are discovering that we live under the same set of circumstances, that we are governed by the same set of laws, that there is something beyond us that words can't quite explain, yet we've made painstaking attempts to explain it while gainsaying the attempts of those we feel contradict our respective interpretations. Yes, friends, we have found the solution! After all these millennia of convincing ourselves we have the solution, we finally found it in each other, through our myriad interpretations of the same reality!

Think of a common problem in your daily life: how does it go about being solved? You begin by gathering whatever information is available to you and drawing a preliminary conclusion, but you're still not satisfied, so you consult others whose opinions you feel may be of value, opinions that likely differ from yours. Now, you and your confidants pool your resources, and your opinions on the matter converge to formulate a reasonable approach to solving the problem!

Funny enough, during my studies of plate tectonics, I was told that, about 150 million years from now, Earth's continents will once again become one. Imagine that: we began as one continent, drifted apart in fragments, and will once again converge into a single continent.

So I suppose there is indeed one solution, though who are any of us to say we, and only we, have found it? Despite the semantics, it seems we have all found it together.

Or have we?

Mahalo.