When I was in elementary school my teachers would often complain to my parents that I stared out the windows a lot and lost focus in class. I would focus, or rather lack of focusing, on nothing in particular as my eyes would slightly disjoint from any one person or object. I know when it’s happening, or maybe more truthfully, I have learned to recognize when it’s happening. It can be best described as the look a deer has before the beaming headlights of an oncoming car at night, a look of bewilderment and inability to react.

Reflecting back I can see how they, being both my parents and teachers, could think this wasn’t something to encourage. In my mind, and I still feel this way, these were not wasted moments but instead moments of epiphany.

Last night at our families dinner table I had one of these moments where I felt myself leaving the moment and lightly touching a higher understanding of something I had been pondering. My 8 year old daughter Megan saw me and did the ‘hand wave’ where you raise it up before the eyes of the person ‘checking out’. Of course I knew what she was doing and she accomplished what she was after, pulling me out of my moment, and got me to engage with her. “Daddy are you okay?”

Disgruntled, but trying my best not to show it as she is only 8, I answered her. “Yeah, just lost in thought.” But the truth of it was I wasn’t lost. I had been having one of those rare epiphany moments where things actually make sense. I was at one with the universe around me and it was… As best as I could describe it… Spiritual. I had touched upon an idea that often comes to most people when they are dreaming. The idea isn’t so much the important thing here as it is the moment of understanding. Often times in my dreams, or even shortly after waking when I’m in the shower and can’t really write it down, I make connections and discoveries in my mind which scream to be further understood and explored. Alas in my dreams I lack the means of doing this and being wet and in the shower doesn’t improved the situation much either.

I believe that all of us human beings have these moments. I believe my parents, teachers, daughter, all had the best intentions, however seemingly selfish, at heart. I also believe that these moments are needed. Albert Einstein, sitting in his patent office in Germany, had a good number of ‘daydreams’ where he would spend considerable amounts of time imagining the universe around him. He was quoted as saying “imagination is more important than knowledge” or something similar. As I am writing this on my own train on the way into work I don’t have internet connectivity to verify so I am going to leave it as that.

Now don’t go thinking that I am comparing myself to Einstein, far from it. I just believe that all humans, to a degree of self actualization, and ability to unplug oneself from their external stimuli, can ‘zone out’. Some just choose to think it trivial and adolescent. In fact I would argue that ‘zoning out’ is actually just the opposite. I find that when I allow myself to become unplugged from external stimuli I can instead focus myself in one whatever it was that I was pondering. In my opinion is it is more of a ‘zoning in.’

Now some may be wondering exactly what it was that I was focusing on? I was looking at my son’s milk cup and reflecting on the words of Carl Sagan when he said “we are all made of star stuff.” I was thinking that the atoms of that cup were forged in heart of a star shortly before it the end of its life where it would explode and spread its ‘guts’ across the cosmos. I was thinking that my entire family was made of similar elements and here we were carrying on a conversation like we were meant to be here. I felt as if life…. Had a purpose. What else can explain the guts of dead stars sitting around a silicate(glass) dinner table upon its iron rods, discussing our events of the day. Now I understand that life isn’t fair and we are fortunate in that we live in the united states and for the most part, in comparison to the much of the world, live an ideal lifestyle. I acknowledge that life itself is not always so benign as everything is fighting for resources of one kind or another. That is not where I was trying to take this.

Inert atoms from the corpse of a long dead star are sitting around discussing their day.

I don’t believe in any humanized religions. I think they are all so tainted and biased that they have all become nothing more a cruel joke that we as a species continually play upon ourselves.

Spirituality on the other hand…. I felt as if life itself was all part of…. This is the part where my daughter had broken me out of my zone.

As unsettled as I was with her at that moment I forgave her instantly. She is after all my favorite little girl in the whole wor- universe.

Selective intelligence and cherry picking logic/facts.