The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times(53)
As I thought about these stories I realized we had left the realm of science, but I was still intrigued.
“I want to tell you about another ‘coincidence’ that made a difference in my life. There was one empty seat on a Swissair flight from Zurich to London. I should have been on a later flight, but my plane from Tanzania had arrived early and I had changed to an earlier flight. The only empty seat on the whole plane was the one next to me. The man who took that seat arrived just before the doors closed. He told me he should have been on an earlier flight, but his connecting flight had arrived late. He seemed busy—I did not speak, apart from our polite greeting, until toward the end of dinner when I started a conversation. I was on my way—very inexperienced and scared, mind you—to do a TV interview with the head of a powerful pharmaceutical company, Immuno, that was using chimps for HIV research in their Austrian lab. They had filed seventy-one lawsuits against seventy-one people or groups who had challenged them over the conditions in their lab. This was 1987 and I was crazy or stupid enough to agree to this confrontation on TV. Well, it turned out my seat mate was Karsten Schmidt who was—I think—then the chairman of Baker and McKenzie. He told me not to worry—he would take up my case pro bono if they sued me! Subsequently, Karsten joined the board of JGI UK, drafted the statutes, and was our board chair for many years. Was it coincidence that put us next to each other on that plane that neither of us should have been on—and that we had the last two seats? If I had not initiated a conversation that opportunity would have been lost.”
“Are you always on the lookout for opportunities?”
“Yes, even if I feel tired I always ask myself if perhaps there is a reason why I am sitting next to a particular person on a plane. Or at a conference. Anyway, it’s worth a small effort just in case. And I’ve met some interesting people that way, some of whom have become friends and supporters.”
“So you think you meet people for a reason?”
“Well, I don’t really know. But I love to think about how things work out. Think of all the events and meetings that have led to the birth of every individual. Take Churchill. We start way back in the dim mists of the past when one individual man met one individual woman; they married; they had a daughter or a son and she or he met a man or a woman; and they had a child. And so it went on until all those meetings and couplings produced a Churchill.”
“Or a Hitler,” I said, a little skeptical about Jane’s seeming belief in fate or destiny. I said as much to Jane.
“But I don’t believe in fate or destiny. I believe in free choice,” Jane countered. “Shakespeare put it so beautifully: ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.’ I believe that opportunities arise and you can seize them, reject them—or simply fail to notice them. If people had made different choices through the centuries, there would have been no Churchill and no Hitler.”
“Nor a you or a me,” I said.
I paused as I thought about it. It gave me a sense that I was part of a long lineage of love and heartbreak, longing and suffering that puts my own struggles into perspective. It helps me to feel that I am not alone and that I am not just living for myself. I am part of something greater than myself—but I don’t know if it is all unfolding according to a plan.
“I am getting the feeling that your underlying belief in what you call ‘a great spiritual power’ is the source of a lot of your incredible energy and determination,” I said. “How do you reconcile your spiritual orientation with your scientific mind?”
Spiritual Evolution
“When you talk about spirituality, many people are uneasy or absolutely put off. They think of a touchy-feely tree-hugging hippie sort of thing. Yet more and more people are now realizing that we have become increasingly materialistic and that we need to reconnect spiritually with the natural world. I agree—I think there is a yearning for something beyond thoughtless consumerism. In a way, our disconnect with nature is very dangerous. We feel we can control nature—we forget that, in the end, nature controls us.”
Suddenly Jane said she’d just noticed it was 12:30 p.m.—the time when she took the old dog, a whippet called Bean, for his midday walk. “Of course, he has access to the garden,” Jane said, “but he is a creature of habit. I won’t be long. But I’ll need to grab a biscuit and some coffee. Give me a thirty-minute break.” And I was more than happy, as it gave me time to get some food, gather my thoughts and prepare the last questions.
Jane was true to her word and reappeared on her screen after exactly thirty minutes. I began the conversation, telling her that I wanted to go back to the topic of our moral and spiritual development.
Jane immediately picked up the thread of our last exchange.
“Well, we as a species are on the road of moral evolution, discussing right and wrong, how we should behave as individuals toward each other and toward society, and our efforts to build democratic forms of government. And some people are also on the road to spiritual evolution.”
“What is the difference between moral and spiritual evolution?” I asked.
“Moral evolution, I think, is understanding how we should behave, how we should treat others, understanding justice, understanding the need for a more equitable society. Spiritual evolution is more about meditating on the mystery of creation and the Creator, asking who we are and why we are here and understanding how we are part of the amazing natural world—again Shakespeare says it beautifully when he talks of seeing ‘books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.’ I get a sense of all of this when I stand transfixed, filled with wonder and awe at some glorious sunset, or the sun shining through the forest canopy while a bird sings, or when I lie on my back in some quiet place and look up and up and up into the heavens as the stars gradually emerge from the fading of day’s light.”