| Home Writers Directory Natasha Josefowitz May 11, 2007 |
Things I don’t
understand I ask our
daughter the doctor, or son the lawyer
LA JOLLA, Calif.—Lots! Some are mundane, some
mechanical, some biological, some economic, some political, some universal.
The everyday things I don’t understand are some
mathematical formulations (I got a D in Statistics but A’s in everything else,
so they graduated me anyway.) There are many obtuse articles on economics that
Herman reads and then explains to me; our daughter the doctor tells me the
medical reasons for whatever is bothering me; our son the lawyer does the same
when we struggle with taxes. I don’t understand why politicians make the
decisions they do—their errors in judgment seem so obvious to me.
As a practicing
social worker, I was privy to many kinds of mental and physical illnesses and
always professed that one does not have to have lived through the same
experience as one’s clients to understand their problems and help find
solutions. Yet, in reading the newspaper, I cannot understand how a person can
abuse a child or rape or torture someone—that is because my brain does not lack
those sections that allow for empathy or restraint.
So indeed I
live in a world that can be quite puzzling at times. Actually, I don’t really
understand how I can dial my cell phone in some restaurant in La Jolla and reach
my son who happens to be walking down a street in London. Now I don’t call
people’s cell phones and start with “Hello,” I start with “Where are you,” and
most often it is not where I thought they were.
I know, I know,
satellites circling around the globe picking up signals and transmitting
signals. Telephone wires were amazing enough, with our voices running from
telephone to pole to pole, and now everything is wireless…even more mysterious.
How about the
computer? One click and I have Google, and next click—the world of information
about anything and everything. I shall never get over my amazement.
I asked a few
friends what kinds of things they cannot understand—How radios and televisions
work was a frequent answer and also trying to understand people from other
countries like the importance of honor in some Arab countries or the importance
of revenge. One friend said he did not understand himself. Other answers include
the stock market—particularly hedge funds, how airplanes stay up, how our organs
function, why we believe in what we believe in, and why don’t the children call
more often?
But the most
mysterious of all is how the universe works. If our brains could figure out the
universe, that universe would be so simple that our brains would not have
evolved enough to figure it out, so the universe is so complex that our limited
brain capacity cannot understand it.
No one even
knows what gravity really is—Newton admitted to making it up as he went along.
If we don’t
really understand gravity, how can we know about dark matter and dark energy? Do
they exist? Can we ever reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics? (Not
that I understand either one!) Quantum Theory says that particles can pop in and
out of existence and so our universe would have popped into existence—we have
theories of parallel universes and intersecting ones, and a superposition of
universes according to Stephen Hawkins. Will we know more when the Large Hadron
Collider begins operation this November or the International Linear Collider
circa 2020 or the next supercollider around 2030?
I read that the
universe is 13.7 billion years old and all of its components—galaxies, stars,
planets are moving away from each other at a greater and greater acceleration.
Now if this
isn’t mind boggling, I don’t know what is.
There are
things no one understands and things some experts do but most people don’t. And
then there are all the things I think I should understand but don’t, but am too
lazy or limited to try and give up perhaps too quickly, feeling guilty that I
don’t make more of an effort to understand this universe I happen to inhabit at
this moment in time. Yet I also accept my limitations and so live contentedly in
my ignorance.
Natasha Josefowitz's column also appears in the La Jolla Light.