The Flip Side Of Crazy

About a month ago I took my son to the airport so he could fly off to see his grandparents in the Bay Area. As it so happens there were other parents there putting their unaccompanied minors on the same plane My son struck up a conversation with one of those parents, a man with kind eyes and a child around my son’s age and once our children had boarded that man stepped over to me and remarked on how smart my son was.

“Yes, smarter than me,” I laughed. “He’s always correcting my pronunciation of the various dinosaur names.”

The man nodded. “Those names are all Latin based, right?”

“Latin and Greek,” I confirmed. “Personally I like Astronomy. When astronomers discover a big black hole in the universe they name it a Black Hole. When they see a cluster of stars they call it Cluster of Stars. Nothing hard to pronounce and all very straight forward.”

“Well,” the man said solemnly, “perhaps the reason the terms in paleontology are more difficult is because our Creator doesn’t want us to fully understand some things.”

Now I strongly believe that everyone is entitled to their own religious beliefs regardless of whether or not they agree with mine but what he was saying went WAY beyond creationism and because I’m….well, because I’m me and have a hard time keeping my mouth shut I went ahead and called him on it.

“So what you’re suggesting,” I said slowly, “is that God divinely inspired paleontologists to give the prehistoric animals they discovered Greek and Latin based names so that nonscientists would have a hard time pronouncing them? And the purpose of that would be that if you can’t pronounce something you’re less likely to read about it?”

I fully expected him to accuse me of twisting his words or his meaning or whatnot but instead he owned up to it. “There are no coincidences in this world,” he said. “For instance, numerology tells us that all numbers mean something. The first number of our children’s plane flight is 3 which stands for communication, interaction and neutrality. That’s a good number for a plane flight.”

At this point I’m thinking this guy is a little crazy.

And yet I bet it’s a lot easier to be him than it is to be me. He can look at the numbers on a plane flight and decide whether or not that’s the flight to take. He looks for what he feels are mystical but definitive signs and they give him direction. There may be uncertainty in his life but he is blissfully unaware of it.

But I don’t see the world that way. I don’t believe that EVERYTHING has a deeper meaning. Sometimes a 3 is just a 3, sometimes scientists like to give things weird names and while I do believe in God I have never believed in divine intervention. That means that while I can pray to give thanks for the world we live in I personally can’t ask God to fix things for me. I can make major life decisions based on the logical and solid information available to me and personal preferences but no number or deity or special sign can assure me that my decision is truly the right one.

So maybe this man isn’t so crazy. Maybe he’s just found a belief system that has made it easier for him to stay sane.

Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Series,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
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