I have only the merest clue about the Black Box. I cannot navigate a plane, or fix a propeller. I have never been in the belly of a jet, nor connected the crucial wires between a security system and the cockpit. But I watch television. I know. The information stored inside it can answer mysteries around the crash, or a malfunction of the engine. No matter how far the pieces of metal are flung, the Black Box is intact. 

 

Why is that?

 

I listened to an episode of Off the Left Eye that talked about our own personal Black Box. Each of us have a core that is impervious to the tragedies that plague us. Even if the appearance is that someone has been trashed by circumstances, be it poverty, disabilities, or war, their innermost being is safe. 

 

How is that? 

 

I take the risk of misrepresenting the message of the two people who waxed both humorously and sagaciously about the inequities of life for the better part of an hour in just a few paragraphs. But it struck home. We humans are obsessed with comparison, as opposed to animals who don't seem to give it a second thought.

 

Well, not quite. I saw an experiment in which two monkeys were rewarded for a simple task, one with cucumber and the other with a grape. The first monkey was infuriated, and hurled the cucumber back at the lab assistant. But for the vast majority of the animal kingdom, they accept life on her own terms. 

 

Not so with people. 

 

We are ranked, classed, measured, and grouped in countless ways, and in those areas where the census and academic awards leave off we pick up the slack. Yet there is, I yearn to believe, a shining nugget deep within each of us that cannot be diminished, because it is from a Source that can neither be sullied not slackened.