Click moments

Rina Jimenez David, a resource speaker in one of my MA Psych classes referred to such as “Click Moments”.

It could be an instance of enlightenment when a piece of heretofore-unknown information presents – oftentimes accidentally- in front of you. Suddenly your perspective changes with this new bit of the jigsaw puzzle. It’s like the Eureka of Archimedes. It’s the light bulb flashing scene for the detective in a whodunit. It’s the A-ha moment.

Click moments may provide clarity, closure and synthesis. However in some instances it could provide ambiguity and reexamination to what you’ve long embraced as absolute truths. Like the result of the Michelson-Morreley experiment for the speed of light which dumbfounded the scientists who were then espousing the Newtonian perspective of the universe.

Probably the most disturbing click moment I remember was the one I had in Shanghai. I was on a weekend tour to Wuxi to visit a GE site. Seated beside me on the coach was an EHS engineer from our Shanghai Innovation site. We exchanged ideas and experiences. Then came the casual mention that he does not have a God. I could not brand him an atheist for there is no conscious refusal on his part to accept the existence of a God. It just so happened that he grew up in an environment that never considered the existence of a Supreme Being.

And then I it dawned on me that he along with 1 other billion people have gone on with their daily routine without a God.

It deeply perturbed me. The acknowledgement of a Force much greater than us might not be an inherent human behavior after all.

Could it be possible then that this God is just a concept we’ve created (at least for some cultures) so that we would feel more secure? Could it be that we created this unfathomable and omnipotent Being so that we would feel less lonely? So that we would find meaning and significance? So that we would have something to hope for when we all die?