A Broader Horizon
In The Art of Racing in the Rain, the main (human) character Denny shares a secret he learned when racing cars in Italy: "La macchina va dove vanno gli occhi." Loosely translated, the car goes where the eyes go.
So too with the vehicle of our bodies and the instrument of our minds. Consider the essential behavior of hand-eye coordination. From bowling to baseball, yarning to yoga, our ability to track and translate the movement of our body to effect change on the external world requires we see the action as we perform it. It also highlights the importance of having direct experiences in the physical world. Nature pushes back in a real and meaningful way. The hyper-novelty of the modern era continues to draw us away from direct, physical experiences and toward screen-mediated virtual ones. I contend that the conversation that occurs between the body, the mind, and the environment is diminished when we over-inhabit digital space.
Our brains prioritize keeping our sightline horizontal. Our sense of balance is predominantly influenced by sight. The multi-sensory array of organs that allow us to perceive the real world is concentrated in the head, so our brains want to know where we are in space.
Literally and figuratively, we see where we are going because it is often where we are looking. To the extent that we allow our field of vision to include a broader horizon, we can approach a more expansive experience.
I believe that the art of chiropractic offers a philosophical, evolutionary, and expansive perspective. Beyond bones and muscles, chiropractic interfaces with the neurological, immunological, and psycho-emotional aspects of inhabiting a human body.
When things aren’t working we tend to look down and watch our feet. I invite you to consider what else you might see by looking up and opening the aperture of your perspective.
De Nova Stella
Prior to 1572, the Aristotelian view of a perfect and unchanging heaven was accepted science for two thousand years. Unlike the turbulent terrestrial and meteorological events of the sublunary sphere, which contained Earth, the stars were fixed. Earlier in the century, Copernicus placed the sun in the center and Kepler described the ellipses of orbiting planets. It was an amateur Danish astronomer named Tycho Brahe who reported something that would further revolutionize the way that humans were to understand the cosmos. The appearance of a “new star” in 1572 disrupted the classical and religious view that the heavens (the sky beyond the moon and planets) were immutable. By using parallax, he was able to use measurements from different observatories to determine that the position of the new star did not change relative to other stars, which meant its distance must be well beyond the moon and not within the turbulence of the Earth’s currents.
Parallax can be used to measure the position or relative distance of objects from the observer. While its use in astrometry is obvious, I think it also provides an excellent metaphor for perspective. If 2 people are looking at the same thing and the distance between them is small, what they are looking at will appear similar. If 2 people are looking at the same thing and the distance between them is large, what they are looking at will appear to have to a different background and they will be observing a potentially different side of the same thing.
If we are talking about objects in (outer) space, the mathematics should resolve the perceived differences. But what if we are talking about the perception of events closer to home? The relative distance between people can be influenced by everything from age to ideology, gender to geography, and education to economy. It is essential to recognize that no one of us has access to or could even see the Big Picture. As scientific advances have and will continue to disrupt what we know about our place in the universe, it is my hope that we can together temper the light of new stars to illuminate the path forward.
Bonus Time
In 1905, the shipbuilder and former mayor of Seattle, Robert Moran, was told by doctors he had about one year to live. He was 47.
Moran had recently completed the project that would crown his shipbuilding career, the battleship USS Nebraska. His rise to fame and success was not ordained. He was only 18 years old when he arrived in Seattle, which was, at the time, a very small and recently incorporated outpost. He had left his family and his home in New York City and landed on the other side of the country with barely a penny to his name. He worked on steamboats, saving enough to eventually pay for his mother and siblings to come join him. With his three brothers, he established a ship-repair business that grew and prospered. He was elected mayor of Seattle in 1888 and because of his efforts to coordinate the rebuilding of the city following the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, he was re-elected to a second term. The fire had devastated the business district, including his own company. He spent the next 15 years growing his business, which thrived and culminated with the completion of the naval contract the Nebraska.
Issues with his health led him to seek medical care, and he was diagnosed with "organic heart disease". Hans Selye would not begin his research into the general adaptation syndrome until 1936. Moran had what would now be considered a case of "executive stress". Regardless of what it was called, both he and his doctors sensed that his health was failing. Robert Moran then did something that changed the trajectory of his life.
He moved to Orcas Island, in the San Juan archipelago west of Seattle, and began construction on a mansion that would be his final project. He left his company in the hands of his brothers and employed his shipwrights to build the home in which he planned to spend the rest of his life. His mansion, which is now the Rosario Resort, looks and feels like it would be able to embark on a journey at sea.
Robert Moran did not die of "organic heart disease" that year. In fact, he lived to be 86. Toward the end of his long life, he donated much of his property to the state of Washington, and constructed the roads, bridges, and look-out tower atop Mt. Constitution with his own resources, looking to ensure the preservation and future enjoyment of the land for public use. Foreseeing the potential strife among his family for his estate, he sold his mansion and nearly all of his possessions to an outside party, again working to preserve the integrity of his legacy.
Why is the story of Robert Moran worth recounting?
What strikes me is that throughout his life, Robert Moran seemed to act as a steward. He amassed great material wealth, yet his actions speak more to a sense that this wealth and these resources were passing through him, not owned by him. As a businessman and public servant, he worked to promote his own interests, but those interests also included the good of those around him.
In addition to stewardship, the story of Moran is a parable of "bonus time." In the case of our shipwright, we can imagine that every day beyond his expected date of expiration could be considered a bonus. His conscious decision to heed the warning signs of his body, to not get trapped in the designs of his ego, and to reorganize how he was living allowed him to live a much longer and much healthier life. Looking out over the San Juan islands, walking in the woods on Orcas, breathing the same air as a family of whales, spending time with loved ones - a chance to pause. Isn’t it all bonus time?
It reminds me of a poem, “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver, which is perhaps the best medium to consider these things:
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
