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We can only control so much

Watching the Fourth of July fireworks can be fascinating. A rocket is launched into the air and explodes above our heads into a burst of fire, which flies in every direction, cascading like a giant spray from a spewing waterfall and lighting up the heavens. As it burns out, it and falls as ashes, and fades from memory, only to be replaced by the next inspiring rocket.

It can seem to be the story of life on Earth. We are born, we grow with our inspiration, then after a brief period of one kind of inspiration and adventure or another, we fade and leave, entering into the whatever, and are forgotten, except possibly to memory.

Some people have a tendency to see all action on Earth, whether from life or not, as meaningless. I have the greatest difficulty in trying to understand how any intelligent being can believe that life has no meaning other than what they personally feel at the moment. When one realizes how everything, not just on Earth, but throughout the universe, is so closely controlled by laws which cannot be eliminated, or modified, it certainly would indicate a grand purpose of some kind. I would suggest that one try to understand that control without purpose is unrealistic. Control without purpose is like planting corn on a concrete highway.

The falling sparks of fire described in my opening paragraph, complete with their eventually falling to Earth being burned out, are merely reacting to the controlling laws that govern the behavior of all action. How can anyone believe that control is meaningless having no inevitable goal. How can any sane person with a reasonable thinking process, believe that persistent, unalterable control has no purpose. Control and purpose are inseparable: they always live together. Control with no purpose is stupid waste. Stupid has neither control or purpose.

Happenstance like stupid has no purpose. It is the exact opposite of control. It destroys and disrupts purpose by its very nature. The main objective of anyone who would employ any kind of control, would find his first duty to remove any chance of happenstance, or stupidity because they would inevitably disrupt his control.

Don’t we as civilized people spend a great amount of our time trying to control events or things, to establish our goals? Happenstance reflects our failures of understanding what we are trying to do. Personally, I don’t accept happenstance as anything but the ignorance of our failure to understand a situation. It is usually our self interest, our desire to accomplish something which gets us off base in our attempts to succeed in cases where our ambition outweighs our understanding. We’ve all been there, you and I.

Life is determined to have it its own way. That is the way we learn. If the laws that govern were not permanently unchanging, the world would be in complete chaos. It is their unvaried persistence and consistency, that gives us the ability to understand and maneuver in the reality of the world we live in.

When we misuse or misunderstand a reality, we usually suffer, not from the anger of God, but from the fact that the unchanging laws are consistent in their action. That’s what’s called learning. The laws of aerodynamics, gravity, chemistry, optics, electricity, mathematics, physics, or even life itself, are a part of the creation of everything. These laws did not crawl out from a bed of slime, or slowly evolve to become what they are today. They have existed from the beginning of creation, if it ever had a beginning. To be brief: 2 + 2 = 4. This and every other law of reality does not, and cannot vary, and has always existed wherever and whenever. They are conditions of reality, whether we approve, or not. In short, things matter, and laws, unlike us, do not have moods. May God bless America.

Richard Westlund is a Dunkirk resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com

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