Ramblings on Robots, Rulers, Rules and Regulations

Caprica Cylon from Google Images

I’ve always been fascinated by robots, not that I’m technically inclined in the least.  C3PO and R2D2 were my favorite characters in Star Wars as was Gort in “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”  I remember the first Superman show I watched, the black and white version made in the 1950’s, which had a robot in it, quite unsophisticated, but still something that intrigued me.  As television became more advanced, so would robots.  I would come to fantasize about Cylons, the later version.  Who wouldn’t want a gigantic metal contraption that said, “By your command?”  Even though I consider my husband Superman, he still can’t lift a lot of those heavy rocks out in the woods that I would love for building projects.

This morning I woke up thinking about all the rules and regulations we have, not just the ones that are handed down to us by those supposed higher authorities who know best, but also those we impose on ourselves.  Life can get so complicated as it is, without rules and regulations greatly oppressing individuality and the freedom to truly flow from the heart.

Rules and regulations can be written down as law, as well as obscured and hidden from sight.  The hidden ones can be the ones carrying the most force, the ones you don’t dare oppose.  Lao Tzo said, “The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished…. The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.”

I asked my husband this morning who the rulers of the world were.  He replied, “Vishnu.”  That’s not exactly what I meant though.  I said would you say that Monsanto, General Electric and the Roman Catholic Church were the rulers of the world?  And then there are the oil companies and pharmaceutical companies.  Corporations basically rule the world.  We may have what we call world leaders, but I feel they are wearing invisible straight jackets for the most part.

Possibly soon robots will be ruling the world.  Hopefully, it won’t come to the same scenario as in “Terminator.”  I write this using Word, which does a great deal of the work for me with the thesaurus and dictionary at my side and spell check.  With calculators everywhere I’m not sure I could add up numbers on my own anymore.  Everything we buy is coded and scanned with cards slid through.  There is no thinking process at all involved. We move along like the cogs in the wheel, or more organically or biologically like sheep.

There obviously was once or many times before us advanced civilizations.  We see the proof in the pyramids and at many other ancient sites.  Were these people(s) great thinkers and mathematicians?  They would have had to have been to have had such high development.  I see the Sphinx, which in my own observation appears to the be the head of an African woman, the Oprah of the day.  I see the resemblance myself.  Could we have come full circle?  How did these vast civilizations fall?  Could robots and corporations have been the culprit?  Thinking disappeared. Flowing from the heart disappeared.

Las Tzo continues, “The wisest course, then, is to keep the government simple and for it to take no action, for then the world “stabilizes itself.” As Lao-tzu put it, “Therefore the Sage says: I take no action yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves….”

I’m thankful I still have some thought process left.

For Valentine Month – Thy Will Be Done & How I Met Superman

The Wedding Dinner

I was listening to an interview with Debbie Ford. In it she said if you only pray one prayer, pray, “Thy will be done.” I totally agree with that. God can dream much better things for us than we can ourselves even imagine.

So many people are looking for their soul mate. I have a somewhat different take on soul mates. I believe that soul mates are our teachers; therefore, they can be anyone we come in contact with, even for a brief time. Sometimes what we need to be taught is not that pleasant for us. I definitely see my first husband as my soul mate. I may have flunked that lesson. It takes two to make a relationship. This applies to any relationship – not just that of spouses. I often hear people putting all the blame on this one or that one. We all play the victim at times and the victimizer, the controller and the controlled. It’s our dual nature until we learn better. I have learned that in any troubled relationships that I may have that I am the one common denominator in them all.  A twin soul on the other hand is someone you are really in sink with and are ready to take that next spiritual step with.

This is about the day I prayed, “Thy will be done.” what led up to it and what followed. This prayer is often prayed after we’ve exhausted all other means of trying to manipulate life the way we think it should be.

I was acquainted with a wonderful woman and her daughter. I had known them for a few years, and found we had so much in common. I especially shared a lot of interests with the mother. We thought much in the same way, liked reading the same kinds of books, etc. I didn’t know the rest of the family, but through more and more contact with her met one of her sons. We had both been single for a couple of years. We began to date. I found I didn’t have as much in common with him; but still I was calculating my plans for becoming a member of this family. Losing my mother about five years earlier played a role, and I think I was looking for a substitute.

I loved spending time with the mother and daughter, but the son wasn’t exactly drooling over me as planned. I was still, you might say, “settling” for this relationship, thinking well you can’t really have it all. My daydreams about finding that perfect man said otherwise though.

The course of this entire relationship was less than two months. He did take me out for dinner at a nice restaurant and point blank asked me what kind of man I wanted. I used my daydreams as a reference and bolted out, “Superman, I want Superman.”

Shortly, thereafter, I had a business trip planned and was fretting over the care of my dog. He offered to come over and feed her. I was so relieved. Upon returning home I found my dog half starved. It takes a lot to make me mad, but this did it. With the utmost determination I started thinking I don’t deserve this and began praying. I basically said, “God, I’m tired of being single. You know the kind of man that would be best for me. You pick him.”

A couple of days passed. I sort of forgot about the prayer. I started looking on line using the keyword art and found Chris’s picture and bio. It sounded like we had a lot in common. I wrote about three lines of email to him to which he responded with a rather lengthy one. He started calling, and within a week drove the two and one half hours that it took to meet me. He said he knew he wanted to marry me the minute I came to the door. It took me a full day. Our first date was a five-mile hike. Now we celebrate our first date anniversary with a hiking trip.

I hadn’t had any more contact with the one who didn’t feed my dog until one day he just showed up asking me what had happened and why I hadn’t shown up at his family’s for Thanksgiving. I replied, “Do you remember when you asked me what kind of man I wanted?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Well he flew in.”

He also met someone, getting married about the same time Chris and I did. All is well with his mother and sister. We are still great friends, as they are also with Chris. I also married into a great family, as all of Chris’s family have heartily embraced me as their own.

In my phone notebook you will find Chris’s office number under Superman. It’s been almost ten years now, and I’ve had no reason to change it.

I’m thankful that Chris taught me that when you have to be gone from the house for any length of time you just leave a giant bag of dog food out.  Duh?  But, in the grander theme of things I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time.