I am now considering…. What is it that I want to create? What do I want to communicate to others? Why? Why do I want to create and communicate with others? What is in it for me? What conscious desires do I have? Do I have unconscious desires that are seeking fulfillment? Now, I am considering….What do I want to not create, avoid from creating and communicating with others? What propels me forward moment to moment? Where does this energy come from? What is the motivating factor?  How is the system structured? What is my function in the system?  What role do I play?  What part of the system do I reside?  Is there a power source?  There must be.

Recently, the two presidential candidates were each interviewed separately by Rick Warren.  He is a Pastor of a Christian Church and wrote a best selling book called…”The Purpose Driven Life:  What on Earth am I here for?  I have his book and I started it but I never finished it.  It wasn’t very user friendly for me as I wanted to read it all the way through and instead the book is set up to be read one day at a time.  That sounds a bit familiar…”one day at a time.”  Anyways I watched his interviews with Obama and McCain and I thought that Pastor Warren did a stellar job.  It was the most informative thing done to date in the midst of creative and increasingly powerful media influence in the political and for that matter all arenas.

The purpose of this posting is not to comment on the Pastor’s work.  Instead it is to focus on something he said several times, consciously and purposefully.   I don’t remember the exact words but the essence of it was that his questions were designed with the intent of illuminating and challenging the candidates worldview.  He went further and made a distinction between religion and faith.  And attempted to equate faith to worldview.  Ostensibly seeking to make the point that whatever faith you have adopted even if it is being an atheist you have a worldview and in the end your worldview is your faith and vice versa.  I think most people who interviewed the Pastor before and after his political forum failed to follow up on where he was leading us here.  I, personally, have struggled all of my life with faith.  I have written about it in previous posts and will not go more into at this point other than to say Rick Warren’s attempt at leadership here has inspired me to write this post in an attempt to help him illuminate the path.

Most of the blogs in this site have to do with Diabetes.  Well, your and my experience with diabetes is experienced in the worldview we hold.  So, read on if you are interested in worldview. 

In our exploration of the concept of worldview I would like to offer two words.  Context and Paradigm. They are siblings of worldview.

Context

1 : the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning

2 : the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs : environment, setting

Paradigm

1 : a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly : a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind.

Worldview

Also called Weltanschauung.

1 : The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.

2 : A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.

So, I looked up Weltanschauung [velt‐an‐show‐uung], the German term for a ‘world‐view’, that is, either the ‘philosophy of life’ adopted by a particular person or the more general outlook shared by people in a given period.  A comprehensive conception or image of the universe and of humanity’s relation to it.

So, worldview is the context or paradigm from which you see life.  It is the “frame”, “screen”, or “canvas” which you use to understand, interpret, see life.

My worldview has, in my opinion, a weak foundation.  It is made up of the questions that began this post.  It is a dance between desire and fulfillment.  a boxing match between what I want and what I don’t get.  Sometimes it is a death spiral between what I want to avoid and I “gots” to deal with.  During more pleasant times it feels strong and new like a freshly manicured garden.  Time here is fleeting as weeds grow fast and take over.   I am afraid to create a strong and stable worldview.  What if I am wrong?