Just As Long as it Doesn’t Work

There’s an underlying thought process that exists in society. Well, western society that is. It peeks out at me to pique my fancy once in a while and it just so happens I was in front of a keyboard when it happened this time.

I fix problems for a living. I have always done this. Things around me just seem to work and sometimes not for any reason other than just my sheer will, much to the amazement of some.

It’s commonplace in my life, and it has started to become requested. 99% of the time, I deliver. I relish the astonishment when it happens.

I will let you in on a little secret. I call this ability my “super power”. I have an ability to make things work.

If you have been fiddling with your phone for an hour trying to do something, or just make it work, it’s not unheard of that I walk up to look at it, the person walks away and before they can leave the room I stop them and say “There you go.”

Computers are a walk in the park. Not because I’m some great hacker, I just look at it and somehow it decides it’s no time to mess around.

One time I was at a field party having a few drinks. A group of manly men were huddled around this old Mustang trying to start it. Everyone seemed to have theories on why it wasn’t starting up. Rrrrr rrrrr rrrrr rrrrr. Not a car guy, I yell stop, run over to the car, lay my hands on the hood of a car like I was blessing it and then I point to the driver. That beast fired right up.

That remote will not turn on your TV? Dunno. I take it, press the same buttons you did for the last ten minutes and it turned right on for me.

I work in a technical support job. I see how “people” make “things” not work. I am the “person” who makes “things” work.

I have a theory about it and from my point of view it is totally correct. If you dear reader disagree with it, no problem because if it’s wrong or it’s right, it’s the operating basis from which I work and from which I make things work.

I observe.

I walk up to a device with this one very simple idea, to which I truly am 100% invested. The thought is, I have no idea but I’ll just look.

The key part to that is truly believing that you have no idea. You can’t think you know anything about it. It’s because of that pesky and cute little saying people have about what assuming does. An assumption indicates you already know, so you don’t/won’t look.

All the worlds an assumption, and we are all played by them.

There’s a specific assumption that holds mankind back. We have sci fi movies envisioning an enlightened future where nobody grows old. The wishes of people for themselves growing up more wise, or their children having what they need to make it in this harsh harsh world. Yet no one knows how to get there.

You can know computers. You can know cell phones. You can know engines. Ironically I am more successful with these things by not knowing them, but that’s besides the point.

So, this is a sort of metaphysical mastery over semi-animate objects. It’s a thing, in reality, that I have had others observe in me. We all know of those people whom things don’t work. Just in general. Everything is falling apart, parts of their car falling off as they drive down the road. (Hey, I know this happens because there’s a muffler on the road near my house.)

The underlying thought? This fairly ubiquitous yet nebulous thought?

It can’t work.

Like really. It’s this.

So, here’s where I see it. If you try to tell somebody that something works, you’ll see this thought poke it’s head up. “It can’t work.”

It’s not a statement on the mechanics of universe. It’s a subconscious note-to-self, it can’t work.

Eat healthy and all your ills will go away. It can’t work.

Take this vitamin and you’ll feel better. It can’t work.

In fact, you will see this thought anytime any answer you provide to someone would bring about an end to something.

Hypothetically, let’s look at cancer. This will likely get under your skin so tread carefully into the next paragraphs.

Let’s set it up. A hypothetical. No really, it’s important for your ability to continue with this mental exercise to not think what I am about to say as true. The cure for cancer exists and has existed for decades and it’s freely available to you.

This statement, if someone doesn’t act glib about it being presented to them, will have substantial consequences mentally for an individual. This statement cannot be true because if it was, “Oh, what have we done?” The people we have lost, the money we have donated, the sympathetic words we offered to a diagnosis were . . . all . . . whatever this answer is, it can’t work. Because if it did . . . well, you can see. Around and around we go, and people will avoid this paradoxical thinking at all costs because the paradox keeps them safe from learning the truth, hypothetically. Safe from the deaths, safe from the reality that breasts didn’t need to be removed, safe from the brains being cut into in the name of health, safe from . . . well everything.

You cannot tell people this even if it were true.

So think about this next hypothetical. Most of the problems that plague humans have an known answer. The answers are out there.

Think of the matrix. Neo was able to see past the “matrix”. What thinking is keeping you from considering that your specific issues are not answered already.

The world is large. The world has billions of independant researchers all making their way through existance. Most have no way of letting you know you are not lost. That things, you know, (that one!) has a resolution. Maybe your neighbor knows, or that ubiquitous internet uncle purveying advice, or a tribesman in Africa.

Or it would be easier to believe that there is no answer. You already know. Such will be your path. Stay on it. There’s no more to write to your story.

But if you’re not done writing . . . look at yourself. That one big thing that has always been the scorn of your life. Someone has beat it. Someone has the answers. Look at yourself closer. What are you thinking right now that keeps you from finding those people who have your answers.

In the internet world, making these statements other than hypothetical would incur a ferocious wrath. Suggesting that someone look at it as if it were not hypothetical, introduces just a little hope into life that is not unwarranted.

It’s just a question of what reality are you willing to have.