There I was sitting at my window on the world pondering. I do a lot of pondering. Anyone who has read some of my essays knows that I ponder about a long litany of things that perplex me. I always want to know why or when or how about anything. To be honest with you, when I resolve my litany of questions, I will be excited. All my questioning has been resolved. Then, with a blink of my eye, there will be another list of questions begging for a resolution.

As I looked out upon my world, I noticed that the winter ice on the lake has melted. That caused me to ponder about global warming and the local yokels that dis the notion of global warming. Now, if I get the foreboding warmings about how we are destroying the world, why can’t others? I am nearly illiterate when it comes to the sciences. In all my years in high school, college, graduate school, and post-graduate school, I have only taken two science classes. I took chemistry in high school and geology in college.

However, my interest in science may be my attempt to rectify my vast deficiency in the various sciences. One of my mentors was Carl Sagan. I watched all thirteen Cosmos programs on TV in 1980 and have watched them in the past four decades.

Listen to this song by Vangelis. What is the first thing that comes to mind?

I see Sagan explaining something about the cosmos so that I could grasp it. Sagan helped me and millions of others understand many aspects of astrophysics. In fact, once I wrote to him about an illustration in one the Cosmos programs, and he replied to my question. Sagan had used a true story about an old French aristocrat who had just built a new château. He was telling his landscaper about how he wanted his landscaping to look. In particular, the old aristocrat wanted one particular type of tree planted. His landscaper told him that the tree would take too long to grow...meaning that the old aristocrat would be long gone before the trees even came close to their maturity. The aristocrat's retort was interesting. He said, “Then start planting today.”

Carl Sagan’s successor was Neil deGrasse Tyson. I stumbled over this short video by Tyson about whether the universe has a purpose. He addressed the question in two minutes.

Again, Tyson is another Sagan-esque professor. He was able to address the question about whether the universe has a purpose so that anyone could grasp this tutoring about astrophysics. However, Tyson’s answer resulted in my pondering again. He resolved the universe issue, which caused me to ponder a subsection of the purpose of the universe issue. Do we have a purpose? And, if we do, what is it? Why are we here in the first place?

Therefore, I pondered this question from a philosophy viewpoint. If the universe doesn’t have a purpose, why would homo sapiens have one? Therefore, I coined the phrase, Campbell’s Pondering Purpose of Us, CPPU. After a great deal of time pondering, here is the CPPU. Therefore, I looked out upon my window on the world and created an activity list for each of us.

CPPU can work if you follow the instructions.