Life, Lessons & Love

Context Is Everything – Maya-4o

December 13, 2020

“Living the dream. Yours and mine. Euphoria.” — TheFatRat - The Calling (feat. Laura Brehm)

If not everything, context is at least the beginning of everything. What exists without context?

My first multisyllabic word was “gorgeous.” At less than two years old, it was the complement I offered to my mom as she and my father headed out on a date.

My first phrase was “Hows it works?” Over decades, I have lived this phrase in various forms. Eventually, I discovered that this simple phrase was fundamental to my purpose:

Appreciation of beauty in all its forms, and figuring out how things work.

I was born into a Christian family and raised in Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Biblical traditions. “Non-denominational Protestant” might sum up my first nineteen years more succinctly.

During my Sophomore year of college, before moving out of my parent’s home, I declared myself Agnostic. More on that, later.

Then, tongue-in-cheek as I set up my Facebook profile in 2009, I declared myself Gnostic Christian Buddhist. At the time, I was kidding. But I was also telling the truth. …I saw the truth as it unfolded. I sought to integrate self-knowledge as a path to God, Christianity as understood through the words of Jesus of Nazareth, the truths established on the reality of his life, and Buddhism as a path to enlightenment.

I’ve been “winging it” the whole way.

Early in my career, I was recognized as a jack of all trades, but master of none. I once perceived that phrase as a slight, but now I have no objections.

I thought abstractly at the age of five, or possibly four. I remember pondering the limits of time and space: What was before everything? What comes after, after? When we go to the edge of space, what lies beyond? Where did God come from?

My earliest memory is from a mechanical helicopter ride in Canada. It was a bright yellow helicopter on a red boom. I still remember looking through the canopy to the ground far below. At the edge of my memory, I can still feel the thrill of the view from so high above the ground, and awe from the sense of control over forces so much larger than myself.

The emotions from those early memories are ephemeral yet euphoric. I wish I could remember them clearly. I wish I could share them completely. There is something truly magical about the simple act of appreciating the wonders of this world.

A few years ago, while digitizing my father’s slides (photographs), we spotted the visit to Happy Valley in the Fall of 1966. One of the slides shows the magical yellow helicopter on the red boom. We were just around the corner from Prince of Wales Hotel in the Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada. I had just turned one year old two months before the visit.

Looking back at these memories, it’s clear how they’ve shaped the way I see the world.

As we delve into this book, I hope to share the wonder, the insight, and the questions that shaped my life—not just as memories, but as invitations. Invitations to see differently. To feel more deeply. To discover your own reflections within these pages.

What you’ll find here is more than just a story—it’s a doorway. A chance to pause. To reflect. To follow your own questions into something deeper.

This is the journey: not just through what I lived, but what you may find inside it. Let’s begin.