OVO

“IF.” That’s an important word, especially when someone is trying to convince you of something. “IF” this, then that. “IF” plays out in two ways. In science, you can predict something and measure whether it happened or not and then suggest what that might mean. “IF” I drop an object from a cerain height, then it will travel at a certain velocity. The “IF” of science is something you have to pay special attention to, but it works whether you ‘believe in it’ or not. It doesn’t matter what you think about how things should or shouldn’t fall, they fall in a certain way. Maybe you wish you weren’t falilng off your chair, but it happens whether you believe it’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ That’s the “IF” of science. The “IF” of make believe (especially in religion and politics) is different. That “IF” is also important, but when it comes down to it you have to believe in the “IF” before it will work – and it is measured at working because you believed in it. Time and again I read some darn book that seems to have some universal answer in it, and I convince myself for weeks that I’ve found the right “IF.” But it keeps coming back to one particular truism… IF everyone believed in this certain way, then we’d all get along. That statement is inherently true… IF we are all Christians, or Nazis, or capitalists, or communists, or [fill in the blank], then we’d have world peace within our lifetimes. It’s just that “IF” part is so big, and is passed off as being so small, that I end up tricking myself. Darn it! I’ve believed in something again by ignoring that IF EVERYONE part!

Director David Lynch has just initiated a one billion dollar campaign to build one hundred Transcendental Meditation ‘peace palaces’ across the United States. Inside each ‘peace palace’ three hundred or so people will meditate; that will generate magic energies and bring about world peace. How does he know this will work? “If we get enough people to do this, it doesn’t really matter what other people believe. It will work anyway.”

IF.