A man went to visit a monk in the forest. After some time searching he found a small hut with smoke rising from a chimney. It was the monk’s hut. The man stopped at the entrance, knocked, and entered. Once inside he was surprised to see a single room, bare but for a table and two chairs. The monk was sitting in one of the chairs. The monk motioned the man to take a seat in the other chair.
“How can I help?” asked the monk.
Distracted by the sparseness of the room, the man asked, “Where are your things?”
“Where are yours?” asked the monk.
“But I am just passing through,” said the man.
“So am I,” said the monk.
Nearing retirement, but not quite there, I notice that the field of therapy is changing. The pandemic caused a shift to online work. Third-party companies manage a lot of the demand for therapy. I have adapted to the online work. But I have let go of many of the third-party contracts that used to flood my office with clients. No more flood.
“The most flexible practice wins,” according to my business coach1. I owned that on the first of this year: I gave up my office. Now I rent it back by the day when I need it. The rest of the time I work from home.
I’m back in the office today. Same office, but more like the monk’s hut now. Sparsely furnished. I am just passing through.
On the drive in this morning I had uncomfortable feelings. I recalled the work of Les Greenberg – he was Sue Johnson’s supervisor, of EFT fame. Les taught me that emotion is a primitive sensory system. It’s supposed to tell you when things are out of whack.
My emotions are telling me that things are out of whack. That does not necessarily mean that I should put things back into whack. I could. Or I could revel in the change.
I have more time now to reflect on the meaning of life, which has been a lifelong passion of mine. It is the reason I studied physiology, to get an idea of what life means biochemically, and then theology, to get an idea of what life means metaphysically.
Some years ago I met Karl Tomm, a Calgary psychiatrist recently named to the Order of Canada. When I told him about my quest for the meaning of life, he told me to read Humberto Maturana’s The Tree of Knowledge. Maturana is back on my desk (at home).
Maturana takes a process approach to biology. He has much in common with the theologian, Paul Tillich. When a biologist and a theologian agree, it’s a special day.
Both talk about life as arising from a buildup of complex molecules. Hydrogen is the simplest element – the simplest atom. Life as we know it requires molecules made of carbon – much more complex. How does the carbon get formed?
The answer is in the stars. Stars are made of hydrogen. The hydrogen collects and forms a big ball, which becomes massive, and when its density reaches a critical stage, fusion begins. The hydrogen atoms combine to form heavier elements. Tremendous amounts of energy are released. This process lasts about six billion years, from birth, the beginning of fusion, to death, when its hydrogen runs out and has been converted to heavier elements – including carbon. At this point the dying star explodes – goes nova, which interestingly means “new” – and the heavier elements are spewed across the universe.
Our earth was formed from these heavier elements.
Our sun is only 4.5 billion years old. We have time. But we, like everything else, are just passing through. In the process, we gain complexity. And then we let it go again. Power separates us from the surrounding environment. And when we die and reconnect with our environment – Tillich calls this “love”.
As these molecular remnants of dying stars coalesce and cool, they combine and become more complex. Carbon-based molecules can be quite complex, forming proteins and enzymes and eventually “networks of molecular reactions (which) produce the same types of molecules that they embody, while at the same time they set the boundaries of the space in which they are formed.” 2
This is the definition of life. Not the one you learned in high school, but a process definition of life. Life is that which reproduces itself, and sets boundaries between itself and its environment. Tillich, the theologian, calls the setting of boundaries power. Life thus involves the ability to create, the ability to differentiate, and the power to do both.
I was trying to get to my uncomfortable feelings. One of the consequences of life – a reproducible entity with power – is that living beings are constantly interacting with the environment beyond their boundaries, monitoring it for changes which could threaten their existence.
In order to do this every living thing develops a reflex, so that whenever a change is sensed in the environment, the living thing reacts to minimize the effect of the change on its internal processes.
If I live long enough I will say more on this.
There’s more to this that I haven’t teased out yet, but this has bearing on what is happening to our world. Not just to my office.