INTRODUCTION

 

“I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you –Nobody-Too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell! They’d advertise-you know!

 

How dreary- to be Somebody!

How public- like a Frog-

To tell one’s name-the livelong June-

To an admiring Bog!”

Emily Dickinson

 

What I am writing here could as easily be an afterword as an introduction.

But first! What are we to make of Emily Dickinson’s poem?

If we are to address important human issues, we can always start by examining who we think we are and whom we suppose think particular things about each of us.

This very “thinking action” can be called “reflecting”!

This territory is also one of being informed by ideas from the wider world.

I continue to reflect on the subject, ”How do I know what I know?”

In so doing I am aware of the unique journey that each of us travels as we live on the earth.

We have countless chances to observe ourselves, and the people around us.

We can read of ordinary and seemingly extraordinary people, and wonder!

What happened in each of those lives?

What did each person say, write, or leave in artistic forms?

We live in times of enormous storage of humankind’s patterns of thinking, writing, drawing and explaining.

Once the libraries of the world contained the main information of the recorded past, but now the internet (World wide web) has been added.

How much information would not have been developed adequately without conversation, idea exploration and such things as “think-tanks”?

Can we consider persons like Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Hypatia, Leonardo Da Vinci, Lorenzo di Medici, Isaac Newton, Mary Wollstonecraft, Wolfgang Mozart, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Emily Dickinson, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and Buckminster Fuller to name but a few.

What shaped their attention to thinking, philosophy, quality of living, story telling, communication, artistic excellence, scientific explanation and creative endeavours?

How much did each person have frailties and shortcomings which

are very similar to our own?

I thank the countless talented, curious and enthusiastic human adventurers who have allowed me to make my own adventures so interesting.

In so doing, I invite each of us to look in gratitude to those who have enhanced all our understandings, and to awaken inspiration and energy to continue the amazing journeys which are our lives.

It is also my intention to invite each reader to discover or even invent actions and processes that will improve the quality of living in as many ways as are possible.

 

“The Brain is wider than the sky-

For put them side by side-The one the other will contain

With ease –and You beside.

 

The Brain is deeper than the sea-

For hold them Blue to Blue-

The one the other will absorb-

As Sponges, -Buckets-do-

 

The Brain is just the weight of God-

For- Heft them-Pound for Pound-

And they will differ-if they do-

As syllable from sound.”

Emily Dickinson

 

References.

 

Gardiner Howard, ”Extraordinary Minds” ISBN 0 75380 481 6

 

Houston Jean “Public Like A Frog” ISBN 0 8356 0694 5

 

Fuller Richard Buckminster, “Critical Path” ISBN 0 312 17491 8