Good Book, bad behavior

The Good Book tells us that the span of our lives is but "threescore years and ten" and, if we're lucky, another 10 on top of that (cf. Ps 90:10). That's not a lot of time. Now, we could be foolish enough to take the statement literally and then point out all the cases above and beyond and go on about how wrong the Bible is, but that would be missing the point. This statement was made a couple of thousand years ago and given that the current overall life expectancy for the US is just under 80 years (#36 worldwide), it's still valid enough.

To the Ancients, you should know, numbers had more significance than as mere placeholders, as they are to us today. Different times, different ways of thinking. Seven was the number of knowledge, both secular and spiritual. Any number to the first power (that is, times 10) was a spiritualization of that number's meaning, so 70, in a sense would be something akin to deep insight, perhaps wisdom. Eight was the number of material satisfaction, hence 80 would mean something like having come to terms with the world. No, there are no extra-deep, esoteric secrets here, rather a simple, at the time, perhaps, generally accepted principle of life: we're not here for long at all, it might not be such a bad idea to make the best of it, not just materially but spiritually (or intellectually or psychologically, if you prefer) as well.

To me, however, the real point to keep in mind is 70 or 80 years is really no time at all in relation to the world as a whole or the entire cosmos. And here, it really doesn't matter if the world is 6,000 or 15,000,000,000 years old (whereby the latter number really hammers the point home): our participation in the Grand Scheme of Things is orders of magnitude less than the total; at best it is more or less a bit-part, walk-on role in the Greater Cosmic Drama. No reason to take ourselves too seriously, on the one hand, but on the other, we should never forget that we really don't have much chance to get a handle on that bigger picture anyway. For as smart as we allegedly are as a species, we have to overcome a significantly small window of opportunity on what's going on, and most of us don't ever even try.

There's another passage in that Good Book that's always been one of my personal favorites: "To every thing there is a time, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (Ecc 3:1, of which, by the way, the Byrds did an awesome cover, "Turn, Turn, Turn"). Not only is there really "nothing new under the sun" (Ecc 1:9), it keeps repeating itself. We go over the same territory, through the same experiences, have the same learning experiences over and over again, and nothing seems to change. As I've said before, as a species, we're slow learners. In this case, too, we could conclude that there's nothing we can, nor need bother to do, because it's all going to come back around anyway. But, as above, that would be a terrible misreading of what we're being told.

There are a couple of reasons why things happen over and over again. Take the seasons, for example, they go through the same rhythm and sequence year after year. The same is true for the months of the year and days of the week. We need to sow when the time is right and reap when the fruit is ripe. Whole civilizations were built upon this very simple principle (e.g., Ancient Egypt), but there are other things, very human things that could be different, that don't have to be repeated, if we would put our minds to it.

In both cases, we end up with the same result: we start thinking there's nothing we can do about anything, it's just the way things are. And while it often looks that way, the real secret lies in being able to determine what you can and what you can't change.