Here’s another thing about “hearing voices” that you are pretty sure are not yours. Sometimes, they tell you to do things that don’t make a lot of sense at the time, but later you find out why – and then it’s like … oh, that’s why.

Even if you don’t believe other people sometimes *just know* things, sometimes we just know things.

Maybe you’ve never once “just had a feeling” that turned out to be true. Maybe you associate such feelings with bias and fear – because all too often they are.

FYI, life is not like some superhighway where believers drive on the right and non-believers on the left. None of us are 100% one or the other – except perhaps an extreme believer or extreme atheist – and I cannot help but to question anyone who claims to be absolutely certain about anything.

My mind fortress is notably porous and prone to all kinds of crazy thoughts. That’s because I’m incapable of creating a fortress without instantly thinking of how I would knock it down. I think it’s part of that whole abused as a child, effectively parentless defensiveness I’ve never been entirely able to shake. I never know when someone I trust is going to hurt me terribly – so I’ve pretty much learned to not trust anyone, ever. I’d like to say this is a strength, but it’s more a habit I have no idea how to kick.

I’m well aware that other people  believe they have lava moats with lava sharks and lava electric fences to protect certain absolute truths. I’m not personally capable of coming up with an impenetrable mental Fortress without instantly coming up with ideas for how to invade said Fortress, you know, for fun.

Previous scenario of course would be quite simple. If I’m going to be silly enough to make all of my defenses out of lava, then all an invader really needs is a lava monster capable of dodging sharks and leaping over fences. Tada, I have now invented lava dolphins. So long to all you naysayers my lava dolphins say as they leap the defenses. And thanks for all the fish.

No series will ever be complete without at least a little Douglas Adams shout-out. For all the little salmons of doubt continuing to ford their way up the stream, I give thanks.

On a totally related note, here’s an example of something I saw in the news recently that made me think what the actual fuck?

Some Republicans in Congress pointed out that if we give everyone an equally nominal amount of unemployment wages, then some people will make more in unemployment than they currently make on their salaries. They might choose to leave their jobs and go on unemployment.

I know right? We should pay these people fair wages. I believe that is what the Republican party meant to say? By way of clarification, what they meant was that we need to lower emergency unemployment to keep those people working – while risking their lives for us.

Isn’t that … kind of like slavery? It reminds me of this one Bible story in Exodus 5. Actually, I recommend the whole book. It’s a good book.

Obviously, we are not living in a perfect world. I believe in God, but I get the people who don’t. To be perfectly clear about the strength of my faith: my faith in God and God’s essential goodness is considerably stronger than my faith in things like physical existence, including gravity.

God might not be real. Nothing might be real. I knew this long before I ever read Plato or Kant. I learned it in the inescapable furnace of an abusive childhood. I choose to have hope – because, frankly, if I’m going to go down I’m going to go down fighting.

That said, I don’t understand hurricanes or global pandemics any better than the next human being staring open-mouthed and asking Why, God, why? If I sometimes say things like, “Perhaps God uses such events to bring out the real human evils in the world,” I then quickly *thwack* myself on the head.

Because it all kind of begs the question doesn’t it?

Yeah, I understand atheism sometimes. I just have way too much of a history with this God-being to give up now. God is not so much my co-pilot as the passenger in the seat next to me gripping the armrest like oh crap as the plane descends again for no apparent reason.

I’m just saying. Sometimes, it be that way.

To cycle back to my earlier point, I think it’s good at times to identify and gesture at “bad voices” – like voices that say *in an emergency* it is wrong to temporarily pay everyone a living wage, especially people who are literally risking their lives to go to work.

Of course that is wrong. Selfishness usually is.

But that’s okay. Lava moats. Lava sharks. Lava dolphins. If only I could actually read minds, maybe that would work. There are some walls even I have no idea how to break.

When all else fails? Vote. Vote hard.

Vote Dolphin. 🐬