A Day in the Life of Chaos

There are two distinct forms of people in this world, the faithful and the skeptics.  Then there are a vast number that exists somewhere in-between.  I suppose I fall into this group yet my mind constantly tortures me. It asks me to ask questions, it asks me to doubt.  Relying on faith alone would be so much easier yet something deep inside of me reminds me that to do so would be to deny the very existence of my brain. Not far from my office in downtown Columbia, South Carolina there is a cemetery.  It is a mix of old and new graves that covers a large plot of land.  Often at lunch as a way of exercising I take a brisk 60 minute walk that often leads me to the winding paths, some mercifully shaded by tall trees.  For the most part I tune out the world as I walk by the graves with my iphone in hand and my ear buds in.  My eyes dance from one stone to the next reading the names and dates followed by a mental calculation of how long they lived.  Some names are so exotic, I wonder how th

Americans, when it comes to our bodies are a modest lot.  I don't know where it comes from.  Why in a society where we readily plaster an image of a scantily dressed person on a billboard do we have such a sense of personal modesty?  I think for the most part Americans don't see this in ourselves.  It is only when we travel around the world and look back do we realize how modest we really are. My first lesson in this came in Europe as a student.  I was traveling one summer with my back pack on my back through the great capitals of western civilization.  From time to time I would meet other wayward travelers and we would decide to journey with each other for a few days if we were headed in the same direction.  Usually the experience resulted in an address being exchanged and a commitment to stay in touch that would never be maintained.  After a few years we would look through our address books and wonder just who that name belonged to.  At any rate, I remember meeting two men