Woes of a Confused Toe

There have been a couple of related questions that have continually vexed me for quite sometime now. These questions are: If something hasn't been proven yet, does it mean it is not there? By the same token, if you want something to be true, and want it really really hard, does a merciful providence interven each time to make it so?

For both of these questions history appears to reply with a resounding Negative. Which, frankly, doesn't help much. For if life were really simple, anything which you couldn't see wouldn't be there and you could as well get along with life with the smugness of successful palm reader. Life being what it is, it is rare that there are easy answers to anything, at least until you have things figured out.

Take this as an example: While on a lazy walk by the beach, if you were to see a clear pool of water that seemed placid in its own rhythm, just by the seaside, would you not wonder whether this pool of water is not somehow related to the vast sea just by its side. Was this pool of water left behind by a receding tide or more interestingly was there some kind of underground pathway that linked the pool to the sea. Was it really true that the seemingly independent wavelets on the placid surface of the pool were in fact in perfect timing with the crashing sea waves just a few steps away? Did that mean the pool existed because the sea also did?

At this point, if you were a normal human being, you would probably drop this idea altogether and get into the more pressing business of enjoying a walk on the sea front or taking a swim on the sea. And you would be right in doing so.

However, if you had a few loose wires and short circuits on the top floor, the existential question of the tiny pool would probably overwhelm you. Random thoughts would fire-up, lighting the insides of your brain like a roman candle (I don't know what that is, but Roman Candle seemed the right thing to say :). You would find yourself in an uplifted state asking yourself deep questions such as:

Was the independent identity of the pool in fact indistinguishable from the overpowering identity of the sea to which its very existence depended? So if you actually dipped your big toe into the pool, were you in fact dipping it onto the sea? And as the existence of the pool depended on the sea, should the pool feel an sense of undying gratitude to the sea? Should it aspire to become one with it?

As the cold water touched your confused toe, a far more interesting question would come up on your mind: Could the converse of your theory that you had propound so far could also be true?

Come to think of it, assuming there was a underwater pathway that connected the sea to a shallow area on the beach, could the sea keep itself from filling that area up and thereby converting it into the pool in which your toe was dipped? So, you would conclude with some self satisfaction, that the existence of the pool was not just a sufficient proof that sea existed, it was in fact a necessary one.

However, all this theorizing doesn't prove things either way. One could sit down and theorize away to eons without being able to conclusively know what the truth was.

It only ends up confusing your toe, which by now, would be blue with cold and may have even attracted some inquisitive crab.

Afterall, the puddle may be the unintentional result of rains! Random, arbitrary, without a reason....