THE PROFOUND MATTER OF THE HUMAN ARMPIT

There's something to be learned from the human armpit. Yes, there is. Take the time to examine any photo or film, and the point becomes folliclely clear. Men are allowed to keep their pit-hair, but women are not....

Rather than submit silently to current custom, some of us feel compelled to raise this matter. Does it not instruct us in the forever-changing ways of our species? At one time both genders were acceptable with hairy armpits. Just like they were with earrings, whigs, tattoes and perfumes. However, over time and space, the rules changed. Suggesting perhaps there really are no rules. Only passing customs.

The list is long. There have been times and places where goddesses not gods prevailed...where homosexuality was not a sin, but an addition...where the elderly were not confined, but revered...where the mentally challenged were not dismissed, but invited...where hallucinatory herbs were common, not convicted....where human sacrifice was deemed the highest form of religion.

As we come upon so many customs so different from our own -- one of the benefits and curses of today's worldwide web -- we are left to wonder. Better yet, to re-think who, what and where we are on this crowded road where 7 billion of us continue to journey and judge one another. As seen from down here on the dusty, angry trails, we're in competition. As seen from an astronaut crew, we are really all the very same mass of moving matter trying to survive on this spinning shrinking sphere.

Long before astronauts there have been prophets. Wise men and women who have taken the time to take the measure of our time on this brief planet. Very often these wise people say wise things which other wise people write down for the rest of us to consider. Some of us attribute all the world's good to these words; lately others attribute most of the world's evil to these words.

Lets us think of it all this way. We may each behold the armpit in different ways, yet we all have the same arm pits. Suggesting that our sameness -- that universal suite of virtues and vices in our nature -- was what those prophets and their words were trying to remind us. That this sameness should be a fine place from which our species might try once more to get this right....