What if the World was Made of Pudding?

Life is full of deep questions.

We go through our days acting like we have it all figured out.  Simply tune into 24-hour news station to hear experts being experty…O’reilly anyone?

But that’s just an extreme example. We all do it. Everyday, all day. That’s how we get through life. Fake it until we make it.

Parenting is nothing but faking it until we make it. Bachelor Dude was not much different from Daddy Dude. Sure, we lived a somewhat different daily existence, but down deep, we’re the same dude. But one day I woke up and I was a Dad, and the the parental faking began. My parents did it before me, and their’s before them. That’s how we exist. We experience, and we learn from our experiences.

However, the rub is that down deep, we really don’t know…about anything. We can act like we are the best parents in the world, but we’re just making it up as we go. We’re ok given our conditions, but no one has the answers. In the same way that no corporation is the perfect corporation, no government is the perfect government, no country the perfect country. We need to be careful of the “experts” we put our faith in.

We let our experty faking abilities cloud the reality that regardless of how much we have advanced as a civilization (mind you many civilizations have advanced quite well before us), we are still very far from understanding the most essential mysteries of life. We are easily consumed by our daily activities, but if we take the time to ponder the biggest of the big pictures, it is easy to see we are clueless.

Which isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s a great thing. Acknowledging the unknown creates so much opportunity. It allows us to drop our minor worries (that often seem major) and focus our attention on priorities. Cheesy, yes…but life, love, family, happiness, community. All of the really fun, warm words that bring us closer to each other.

Where is my rabbit hole of ramblings leading us?

Mrs. Dude and I battle over bugs. Mrs. Dude is very anti-bug in the house….especially spiders. Not that I’m pro-bug in the house, but the Dude generally abides. I’m not overly concerned about a spider.

Mrs. Dude used to squeal an ax-murder scream and expect the Dude to ride in on his white horse to save her every time a bug was encountered. Then reality set in. I don’t kill bugs. I catch them and put them outside. And most of the time I don’t catch them well, so they generally escape.

I’m not worried about it. I’m not bothering the bug; I don’t expect them to bother me. This philosophy doesn’t sit well with Mrs. Dude.

Reluctantly, she has accepted me for who I am. She now kills her own bugs…and leaves them for me to clean up.

But the deep questions still linger in my mind. While I am now just the janitor that scoops up the kill, I’m still involved in the process. It makes me wonder where we draw these arbitrary lines.

If I’m confused, my kids must be as well. Should I just fake it until I make it? Ignore my ignorance of the answers to life’s deeper questions?

So, the ramblings lead us here, to this video. I came across this video today, and I was going to share it with Mrs. Dude so she’ll know what I’m singing to her every time she requests that I clean up a dead bug, but then I figured a quick blog post would be in order. Now 45 minutes and 10 paragraphs later I’m finally getting to the video.

Seriously, what if the world was made of pudding?