Questioning Everything Propaganda
Bill Page, my father is a life worth celebrating as much as it is my life as a product of his upbringing in ways that later complimented my upbringing with my mother. While oil and water do not mix, they have the tendency to serve similar purposes in fluid dynamics as relatable to being the best version of oneself. This is a duality of what doesn’t mix, does compliment and I am proud to be a product of both.
And on my dad’s side I have learned to survive situations that were either real or imagined as real to me. From my very first camping trip at age 5 to being vested in the sciences, I remember experiences of learning everything from knowing to dig three feet for disposing my human waste if in the wild to learning that an electron of an atom changes its orbit around an atom without moving. This wide spectrum of nourishment has grown a garden in my mind of maintaining curiosity with an open mind and having an appreciation for critical thinking with an aim to seek truths in all things. My father cemented in me a will to understand and I have since learned that an aim towards understanding is the basis for all true love.
I know my dad being a critical thinker had an aversion to anything religious based; however that never cut him short of expressing belief in the spiritual and esoteric aspects of our living experiences. He too questioned and understood that ultimately truth comes from within, not with-the-outer world experience.
My father was skilled at many things; a polymath some would call it. Not so much a jack of all trades. He, like I was more concerned and invested in understanding how all things of this world and inward world connect and work. And this connection or gateway was an aspect I spent my entire life exploring.
It would not have been possible for this direction in my life, of pondering, thinking while assimilating the relationships of shapes and forms of all things if it was not for my father’s insights and influences on me.
Most may reflect a turning point in my passions being drawn to computers when my father came home with a computer when I was ten years old. I attribute the greatest change in my life when I was 14 years old. That is when my father told me the nature of a quantum leap of the electron in changing orbits around an atom. That is what led and continues to lead my curiosity.
The sky is not the limit. That there is no limits to the contentment of exploration and understanding in all mechanics behind all unknowns. That all unknowns are of an infinite quantity and that there will always be something for humanity to explore and understand. He gave me conviction that science is and will never be complete in our approaches and understanding of all things.
With that I have explored doubts about anything we know in this world to be true and can state with some certainty that my father is with us all from within as he has left his body.
With understanding my father, I respect that everyone has their lens from which to see; much can be filtered out by certain behaviors and habits that may have been responsible, partly to unfortunate chain of events. My father had not spoken to me for over 15 years, most of which no one in the family knew of his whereabouts. There could be many reasons for this disconnect: from unaddressed regrets to the stress of the thought in reconnecting after unsolved resentments.
I do not hold my father in negative light because of that. He had a good reason to reconnect with me before my first heart surgery and he did. We talked and related on the phone for over 20 minutes after his first stroke. Then with the grace of my uncle I saw him many times after his second stroke that took out his speech centers.
In opposition to his placement of standard of care, I could tell that a lot was going on in his mind. Discussion with him present with my uncle revealed that in interpreting his body language. And some communication was established with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ questions where a ‘yes’ would mean move a hand and a ‘no’ would mean move a leg.
My father will continue to live through me. I do credit my father in certain influences I have upon others in my life. In my own processing of my father’s death, I only wish folks to keep an open mind.
As his favorite artist Frank Zappa once said:
“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.”