Stories In The Hedge Maze

 

We're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?  

Dr. Who:  The Big Bang    

There's something magical about this quote.  Billions have lived and died on this planet. It would be unreasonable for us to remember everyone who has gone before.  And yet we do remember stories about people whose lives impacted our history.   This is not just for the famous.  Your surviving  family and friends will carry your story with them.  We still share tales from antiquity and then are amazed that the ruins famed in myth are, in fact, real.

Science has steadily answered our most arcane questions, a role for which religion is ill-equipped.  Science asks a question and then seeks the answer.  Religion starts with an answer and then asks questions that support the answer.  Even so, Science has not answered the question of what happens after death.  And I hope that question is never answered.  

As I pass through the Maze I can feel the tingle of stories coursing through the hedge.  Dao (rather like the Internet) never forgets.  And upon lucky occasion sees fit to uncover a little more of our reality as it has always been.  The stories are guides along the way, self-help books written by humans but with the intent of making things better.

The Code of Hammurabi, The Bhagavad Gita, The Dao De Ching, The Dhammapada, The Abrahamic Texts:  all contain ancient wisdom about being a better person along with parables full of metaphors and analogies.  None is better than another.  None is more wise or more believable than the others.  Some have a piece of the answer, others have got it fairly well sorted.   We should be able to read these for ourselves and decide what is relevant to our current status in the Maze.

Consider that the ideas whispered through the branches forming the hedge influence your choice at a fork in the road.  This is how so many are led astray, making disastrous choice after disastrous choice because of the whispers around them.  This is certainly what happens in cults, where the only stories adherents have are those generated by those in power.  This is why conservatives are so opposed to education because it might expose children to alternate ways of thinking -- which is critical in our mobile society.

As for me I plan to continue my life in such a way that if someday my bio is turned into a book, Florida would ban it.