Meatballs and Uncertainty

CS Lewis said that the best children's stories are ones that also speak to adults. The movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs fits the bill. What a great movie! It was fun and entertaining for both me and my eight-year-old, and it had something to say about temptation, greed, the need for parental approval and our society's emphasis on physical appearance. Plus, as a friend of mine pointed out, the film maker provided a great educational moment by giving the female lead a peanut allergy.






This is the lead paragraph in an article in Time magazine this week.

The brain loathes uncertainty. In laboratory experiments, humans actually fear uncertainty more than physical pain. We are simply wired this way.

The article is about the swine flu and how our minds may be our biggest enemy in battling it. But I was kind of stunned by the above statement. I know we don't like uncertainty and that it makes us uncomfortable, but that we would rather be in physical pain than in a state of un-knowingness is pretty amazing.

Kind of of lends at least some explanation to this whole healthcare debate debacle and all the anger surrounding it. Maybe our Christian nation needs to adopt some Buddhist practices to make us more comfortable in the now when our future is unclear. Our maybe we simply need to practice what we preach and actually live like we believe that God is indeed God. And that even when our best-laid plans (like turning water into food) go awry, we have one constant on whom we can rely.