Miracles Happen

I was watching the Olympics today and I was reminded of the epic defeat of the Soviet hockey team in the 1980 Olympics. The "Miracle on Ice" is what Al Michaels the announcer for the game coined it. Now, obviously this is not an actual miracle, just hard work, good coaching, and luck, of course, that helped the 1980 USA Olympic Team to beat the Soviets, but it got me thinking. It got me thinking about Mother Theresa, and medical miracles.

As we see examples like Lance Armstrong overcome metastatic tumors to become one of the worlds most respected and famous athletes, I always wondered how he could be so lucky. How did he elude the grimy hands of death? Why him? As a man of science i wanted to understand how this miracle happened. Because I am a Cartesian, I cannot just accept the fact that it was a miracle. I am uncomfortable in not knowing what caused this miracle to happen. As a Cartesian, I want to classify and replicate the cause of this miracle. However, if I am a Cartesian, I am also supposed to separate the mind from the body...

As we discussed in class, and as I know from my personal experience, the mind and the body cannot be separated. I know that when I experience different emotions I carry myself differently. When I'm happy, I have a little "pep in my step", and when I'm upset, I look like I'm going to hurt you if you talk to me. From being an athlete, I also know that your mindset affects what your body does. If you feel confident or self-doubting, whether it be a full count with the bases loaded in the world series, or trying to score the winning goal in your state high school hockey playoffs, your mind controls what and how your body is going to perform.

I feel like I am not a pure Cartesian, but rather a mixture of ideas, and ideologies. Cartesian-ism may play a big role in the way that I think, but I cannot separate the mind from the body. And sometimes I think that things are better to be left alone sometimes. I like the saying "Shit happens", because I dont feel the need for everything to have an explaination at this moment in time. I feel that as the human race advances, we will be able to better understand how the world works. We may be obessed with categorizing, and organizing things, but having the unknown makes life interesting...