Little Black Box

While growing up I spent a few summers at Super Camp. It’s marketed as a life lesson/academic intensive experience held on a college campus, but it’s really a dumping ground for troubled kids with high IQs.

We sat around doing trust exercises that involved telling deep, dark secrets to each other. To bond and learn leadership, or some other valuable life skill. The problem with show and tell is that we were all there for a reason. We were intellectual rebels with authority issues with too much time. We didn’t share, cry or care for anyone that couldn’t measure up, and we only played to win.

It’s hard to judge after a few days of hearing stories about rape, abuse, abandonment and discrimination. It puts life into perspective. You bond in an inexplicable way. Booksmarts were irrelevant because everyone was brilliant in a way (and generally smart). At the end of the month we got a frisbee, a medal and a “good luck” for the real world.

Years later I still hang up the fabric frisbee. It reads “This is It”, a daily reminder that “it” matters. That there are plenty of smarter, harder working people playing to win. The challenge to be meaningful in an age of information and distraction.

I believe that people should be trusted implicitly to be themselves. Through the pursuit of action and reception of consequence empathy occurs. Through empathy philosophy is formed which consequently births personal code of ethics and morality– of which implied actions are given integrity. Therefore, any conscious decision must be with integrity to truly gain experience. If philosophy is the perception on a sum of experiences, which create empathy, of which interpretation may vary all attempts to globally define morality or ethics is impossible. Therefore, the only sensible philosophy is to trust that others will act within their personal philosophy (set of rules) towards ends that are intrinsically with integrity, which may or may not reconcile with your own. Therein, a sensible conclusion is the acceptance that actions may inherently be immoral, unethical and self-serving; but do so with integrity.

Little black boxes (on an airplane) usually contain the last few recorded minutes before tragedy. It cuts through the chatter and gets to the meaningful part. I strive to live like that, exploring and sharing in a sincere, meaningful way with things and people that matter. With others that passionately seize each moment as if their last.

~ by completelyunexpected on April 11, 2008.