Horse people, grab your safety (a.k.a. your S.O.S/OH SH!&*T!) straps.
The rest of you, fasten your seat belts.
We are going on a wild ride. First we will lope through the 17th century; then gallop through the weird world of quantum mechanics; leap over the three theological virtues of FAITH, HOPE, and LOVE, and pull up at that most idyllic of places, the MMSC barn.
Ready?
We’re off!
It’s 1605. Queen Elizabeth has recently passed away. Her first cousin twice removed, King James I is on the throne (working on the King James Bible, by the way). Shakespeare has just written Othello. A bunch of venture capitalists are collecting funds to set out for the New World where they will found a colony and name it Jamestown. France is ruled by Henri IV; Spain by Philip III. His subject, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra publishes a raucous, ribald, spoof of chivalric literature: Don Quixote de la Mancha that will become an instant success and an international classic down through the ages.
We all know the story: Crazy old man sets out on a nag accompanied by a fat peasant astride a donkey to live the life of a medieval knight, righting wrongs, defending church, country, and virginal ladies. Trouble is he is about 200 hundred years too late.The Age of Chivalry is dead. Nobody crusades any more. Instead, they slog along trying to defend their status, their savings, and their stuff.What most of us don’t know either because we’ve never read the book, or we read it so long ago when we were young and naive, is that this is a scathing satire of sheer genius on just about everything in Spain in the early 17th century: Society, politics, religion, culture. Cervantes was the John Stewart of his day. Observant, clever, naughty, and really, really funny.
But it has a deeper level too: To Dream the Impossible Dream level. It’s the tale of clashing realities. To Don Quixote, windmills are giants menacing the countryside. Sheep herds churning up dust clouds are Moorish armies on the march to be conquered. He is not delusional. He is on a noble quest of service and purpose. Yet he slams time and again into the pedestrian backdrop of daily living.
Those who think out of the box are familiar with these collisions. Fantasy against reality.
That’s where quantum mechanics comes in.
It is 1900 and Max Planck develops a “theory of quanta,” rocking the foundation of the three hundred year old Newtonian world of physics. In 1905, Albert Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity. Six years later, the nucleus of an atom is found, followed in 1915 by Einstein’s proposal of a general theory of
relativity. In 1924, matter waves are discovered. Schrodinger comes up with that pesky “thought experiment” leaving us all wondering if the cat in the box is dead or alive or both.
Over the next six decades, the world of quantum mechanics explodes with neutrons, positrons, masons, quasars, quarks, all bursting out of the minds of the 20th century physicists. And the world is getting weirder and weirder. Matter is both a particle AND a wave. Time speeds up or slows down, depending. Age may not be chronological but simultaneous. And reality may not exist on its own.
So the tree falling in the forest only makes a sound if someone hears it? Maybe so. It also could be that the tree only falls if someone perceives it having done so!
“No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon,” said Princeton professor John Wheeler, who worked on the Manhattan Project and later coined the term “black hole,” those matter hogs in space. Hailed as a “physics super hero” of the latter 20th century, Wheeler totally blew apart the Newtonian idea that the world existed in a defined, objective way. Instead, he argued, that the universe was subjective and interactive, and advanced the theory of genesis by observership.
Another way of saying this in a more intelligible, albeit “woo-woo” way, is: Read The Secret, the 2006 bestseller that talks about the Law of Attraction. The premise of this book is that we can contribute to the creation of a physical reality by what we direct our minds to. “Thoughts become things, choose the good ones.”
Still with me? I hope so. I know all this takes a real leap of faith, which is why we are going to quickly hurdle the three theological virtues faith, hope and love heralded by Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 of the Book of Acts.
Which brings me to the MMSC. Thank you for your patience while I took you on the unorthodox and seemingly “unhorsey” ride. But it my mind, all of these subjects have everything to the MMSC, and I wanted you to know that.
Sure we may be like Don Quixote trying in our small way, one horse at a time, to change a horse’s world, an adopter’s world, and maybe sometime, the racing world.
Or we might be like quantum physicists determined to influence the creation of our reality with good thoughts and positive imagined outcomes.
And we need to approach the reschooling of every horse with faith, hope and love every day. But, sometimes that’s not so easy. I have, for example, a horse in the barn right now that’s really testing my faith. I’ll tell you about it…in the next blog.
Cheery bye,
Susanna
To dream ... the impossible dream ...
To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...
To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...
To run ... where the brave dare not go ...
To right ... the unrightable wrong ...
To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...
To try ... when your arms are too weary ...
To reach ... the unreachable star ...
This is my quest, to follow that star ...
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ...
To fight for the right, without question or pause ...
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ...
And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie will lie peaceful and calm,
when I'm laid to my rest ...
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach ... the unreachable star ...
