HIDE & SEEK LIKE IT'S NEVER BEEN PLAYED BEFORE

Anthropology -- and watching my grandchildren -- makes clear that one of the distinguishing features to our species is our ability to play games. Easily one of the most universal is hide-and-seek. However, what if we re-spin the game?

Instead of hiding and then seeking, what can we say about our species' habit of seeking in this life but then hiding from some of what we find? It seems true in so many ways:

* As children we seek the freedoms of adulthood, then often hide from its many responsibilities
* As citizens we seek our right to free speech, then often hide from its ethical responsibilities
* As parents we seek the pleasure of children, then often hide from their awesome responsibility
* As politicians we seek the power of office, then hide from its dutiful responsibilities
* As celebrities we seek the glory of status, then hide from glory's responsibilities

The list is much longer, but the fact is already clear. All too often -- in the life of an individual and of a nation -- we hide from some of the realities that come from our search. Our rights are so much easier to live with than our responsibilities. Ask any mentor about this -- teacher, clergy, coach, general.

Right now there is an enormous flush of grand scientific discovery in our age, which continues to identify genes and codes and lobes which help explain our behaviors. We are told that certain of these human elements (we even give them numbers and names) are what channels our actions to fight, to flee, to love, to mate, to war, to create, and ultimately to believe.That last one has earned the honor of being labeled the "god gene."The search for such amazing scientific data is what helps mark our modern Age of Science.

Now here's the question...

In seeking (and finding) so much about our physiology and psychology, has the search become the solution? In other words, has discovering and naming and engineering these various human elements at last begun to crack the code grappled with by a thousand thousand philosophers and poets: What is man? Or is it ironically possible in this very search we are hiding from ourselves the possibilities of human elements that operate beyond the reach of science's searchers?

Who can say? And yet, who can deny the smiling serenity of someone like the Dali Lama which seems to bubble up from somewhere other and more than any smiling gene or stimulated brain lobe...?