Weighing secrets

How much do you weigh? No really! This is NOT a simple request. Just what EXACTLY do you weigh? If you get on an ordinary bathroom scale you might get within a few ounces of your true weight. Not good enough.

Let’s put a little more exactitude into this measurement. Let’s weigh you in a physics lab that does experiments with gravity. So up you go on their superduper sensitive scale. There now, what’s your weight? Wait a second! Where’s this lab? Is it at sea level or high on a mountain? That would change the values. So let’s get a physicist to affirm that the scale has been properly calibrated for distance from the center of the earth.

But wait, since the earth is spinning, this gives you a thousand mile per hour motion that affects your weight (faster you go, the more your mass increases), so what’s your true weight? The PhD says, “Our scale isn’t that sensitive to measure that small of an effect.”

So, instead of being able to know your true weight, let’s settle for an imagined method for finding out your true weight. At least we’d have some satisfaction that we “could” if sufficiently motivated and had the budget for it, find out your true weight. So, here is what we end up doing: we get a team of 300 scientists with billions of dollars in grant money who build this incredible scale that somehow takes into consideration all the known almost infinite mass-values of the universe. We know where every speck of the universe is and how much it’s pulling on you.

But wait, now YOU have to get a PhD in physics to truly understand the value of your weight so that it is not merely a number to you but instead, you REALLY know what a gram of weight means. You really really want to KNOW your weight, don’t you?

But wait, after you get your PhD in physics, you’ll find that you disagree with some of the prevailing theories that were used to base the computer models upon. Given that distrust and that amount of uncertainty, you must dedicate your life to ever more research into the mysteries of gravity.

But wait, even if you do get to that almost mystical moment when the entire universe is accounted for, and the scale is perfectly adjusted, and you are certain of your models, and you step on the scale, you have to decide what thought to have while you are being measured. If you have a really intense “big” thought, well, then that’s a lot more energy you’re using, and that will change your weight.

So, you study for years with a yogi who teaches you to turn off all thinking for a few seconds. Now you get on the scale, you sit in peaceful repose, you stop thinking, the team of scientists all coordinate their massive arrays of instruments and computers and, but wait, all the scientists are moving around and constantly “freaking out” the computers that are all set to measure you at an exact moment in time. They have to stand perfectly still.

Wait, everyone on earth should stop moving too.

Wait, everyone on earth should stop their thinking too.

Wait!

Ask yourself,Will I ever know a single thing? Is there even such a thing as “a single thing” if everything is so interconnected?

Can I honestly say that I truly want to know anything-let’s face it-I have been SO SLOPPY in my measurements of everything so far in my life? Why am I satisfied with “close enough?”

What DO I know absolutely? What is my proof, and upon what basis am I certain?

What gives me such courage to walk outside-where tomorrow, because a butterfly’s wing on the other side of the earth has set in motion a series of events, I will have a lightning bolt strike me?

Without faith, what could I do?

What is my faith? Why do I feel so comfortable in such a dangerous world?

Am I stupidly and blindingly ignorant of the immense complexity and sheer unknowable dynamics of life, or do I know a secret?

Do I know something? Can I whisper it in my ear?