Will the real world please stand up?

an essay excerpted from the book "Scraps and Other Thoughts"
by Stanley Babson

Stanley Babson and his family have been coming to Harbour Island for 50 years. He spends his time swimming in the bay and writing philosophical essays on his musings. Briland Browser sells his books, and all proceeds go to the the Briland day nursery. Stop by and pick up a copy.

The early morning sun peeks up over the horizon and bathes the harbor in golden rays which seem to undulate on tiny wavelets that rise and fall from boats bobbing at their moorings.

"Good morning world!" I announce with great enthusiasm as I pause in my 7 a.m. before-breakfast swim to say hello to the new day. This is a new, bright, Bahamian day, and this is my wintertime Bahamian world. But this is not my only world. There are other worlds that I occupy from time to time. There is my Connecticut world where I spend the bulk of my time when I'm not in the Bahamas. There I greet the morning sun at 7 a.m.(no swim). It's still the same greeting as the early rays of the sun emerge to warm and lighten the field where bluebird lives. As I announce "Good morning world!" to nobody in particular, a squirrel leaps from the bird feeder in fright and darts for the safety of his next not far off. I have a never-ending battle with this squirrel who pigs out at my bird feeder and muscles the birds away.

So that is another world. And there are others more transient than Connecticut and the Bahamas. So many worlds...like the scripture in the Bible, "In my house there are many mansions." So too in life here on earth there is a wide diversity of possible worlds. What then is the "real world"?

To tell the truth...

There was a popular TV show not too long ago where a panel of celebrity "experts" was confronted with three characters each pretending to be some eminent personage in disguise. The panel would direct questions to each of these characters in an attempt to decide who was the "real" personage. When votes were cast, the moderator would ask for the real person to "Please stand up." Quite often the panelists were totally wrong in their selection. So I've sometimes come to ask myself what is the real world...will the real world please stand up.

For me this is not too complicated a question, but nevertheless, it seems to be increasingly muddied and confused as the years roll by. I've come to realize that what is reality to me may not be the same reality to someone else. When I look at television shows these days, I know that this is definitely becoming the case.

As I have my morning wake up swim in the Bahamas, I am not alone in an isolated vacuum, All around me the world is waking up. Roosters are crowing, dogs are barking and roaming the streets in search of I know not what. The Haitian day laborers are arriving by boat from across the bay to clear brush, do yardwork, and other menial chores for the large estates up island. Boats are arriving from Eleuthera across the bay delivering fresh bananas, vegetables, and fruits, for the street stalls along Bay Street. Much is going on even at this early hour. There is a certain vibrance and vitality to each morning activity.

Then I spy a jogger or power walker trotting along the street, eyes transfixed on the roadway ahead, ears clamped tight shut with a walkman blaring forth, or crooning noises from another world...not this one. I wonder, is our natural reality so bad as to block it out and live, partially at least, in another world? Do we discard any interest in the roosters crowing, the wind whistling through the casarina pines, the slap of waves upon the quay? Do we disdain the beauty of the panorama of the bougainvillea blooms, hibiscus in all colors and varieties, the counterpoint of different vegetation...sea grapes, palmettos, oleanders, the smell of jasmine?

Electronic reality?

In a similar vein, I must admit to being rather appalled at the tremendous growth in the video games world. This is a world of make believe, largely dominated by violence where the video user sits in a chair staring at a screen and punching buttons to either escape mayhem and destruction or to inflict mayhem and destruction on others. Good for the eye and hand coordination surely, but when it dominates one's own allocation of time spent in life, it often results in "Let's hear it for the substitute world!" This unreal world appears to be more appealing and even increasingly so to our young. Reality is dull.

What then is to become of the real world as it exists outside the TV tube, the VCR, the computer, the movie theater. Does it have a future? Will there come a time when it won't be able to "stand up"?

Realities beyond

And going perhaps from the sublime to the ridiculous, I wonder how many other worlds can there be of which we have no real awareness yet? The Hubbell telescope informs us that it has spotted countless new galaxies, containing billions of new stars outside our known solar system in our own galaxy. How do we relate to this new information? Are there other worlds out there beyond what we can conceive of here on our own puny earth? Are there living organisms out there more or less advanced than we ourselves?

Mathematically the likelihood of these quesries is yes..of course! But how can we relate to such other worlds if they do exist? And if this world out there is an expanding universe, how much expansion away from what we know here and now can there be? I personally cannot deal with infinity. I am bound by the finite, the measurable. I cannot even come to grips with my own well-defined solar system. How can we deal with what is yet beyond and as yet unknown?

Realities within

So much for the worlds of outer space. But what of the worlds of inner space? There are such worlds that we are largely ignorant of. ..the worlds of bacteria, germs, microbes, anarobes and what else? The Natural History magazine recently did an article on this subject which I found startling to say the least. What really got me was the statement, "The colon is replete with microorganisms total numbers of which are in the range of 100,000,000,000,000. Their dense concentration there approaches the theoretical limit of what can fit into a given space. (I would hope so!) More than 500 different species of bacteria regularly reside in the colon of every living person.

What kind of world is this inside me? We'd like to think that anything that is inside of us is pretty well known and subject to our control. Is this some fantasy or delusion? I find it mind boggling to say the least. It is really more news than I care to know.

But to show you how the mind works, an extraordinary thought emerges from all this that tantalizes me. Suppose these many bacteria, germs, microorganisms are in reality living in their own micro world? Suppose we, I mean you and me, are ourselves separate universes or galaxies of atoms or molecules in which these microorganisms exist, move, live out their lives and destinies. Are there then inner worlds within us just as there are outer world outside us?

Sleeping dog realities

And taking this thought one step further, is it possible that as they live out their lives within us separated by the molecules and matter that make up our body mass, why are not we ourselves bonded to land masses and water masses within given planetary objects that in turn serve as molecules in some larger undefined organism that represent a higher body of living than we know of or can imagine.

Is this really such a strange and disturbing thought? So when I say, "Will the real world please stand up," I'm really not sure just what will emerge... what will stand up... perhaps something far more involved than what I have identified in my lifetime. And when all of this is considered, I'm not so sure I want the real world, whatever it is, to stand up. Perhaps it's better letting sleeping dogs lie. There's lots about the world that I know and live in that I like... just as it is.

Other books by Stanley Babson include:

• Thoughts While Walking a Tropic Beach
  
• Thoughts from Two a.m. to Four a.m.
  
• Thoughts while driving a tractor
  
• Pools of Thought: a collection of poems

Stanley's father, Stanley M. Babson, began the family writing tradition on Harbour Island with THE book on "Bonefishing."

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