Three sounds my ears-to-brain connection cannot easily distinguish from the other: the roaring sound of a jet flying high overhead, the sound of hard plastic wheels of a baby carrier my neighbour pushes down the street, the sound of the heat pump through the house walls.

Soon, I shall be back on course, having achieved an important goal, and can return my character Lee to his Martian settlements.

What is the difference between meditation and prayer?

My GP M.D. gave me a book titled The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

As I flip through it, I ask if the difference between meditation and prayer is like the difference between Ubuntu Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Since everything around me is the illusion I want it to be, then I get to choose to say what differentiates meditation from prayer, taking into consideration all the billions of folks like me in order to keep my illusion in relative peace with itself, more and more free of unnecessary conflict as the measured changes between sets of states of energy we call days pass by.

Understanding that the semipermeable membranes we call cultures filter how the changes pass from one set of billion to another.

In this meditative moment, I let contradictory thought patterns pass through each other with ease, able to watch them reverberate out of phase with each other secure in my beliefs that who I am is who I am and who you are is who you are, no need to feed natural levels of insecurity, happy to build up our healthy level of support for our comfort zones.

I used to fear not having the right answer for questions, quite possibly due to my school-age training when being a people pleaser meant wanting to provide the learned responses to questions taught to us by our authoritative, grownup teachers, and get immediate approval from them for my support of the teachers’ participation in the education system upon which they depended for their livelihood, mental health and social acceptance.

The path toward my eventual demise takes many detours.

Luckily, despite some of my unhealthy habits, I am, at 51+ years of age, healthier than I should be.

According to new guidelines, there seems to be no more reason for me to take the blood pressure and cholesterol lowering medication that had been prescribed for my former unhealthy habits.

If I paid for three months’ worth of the medicine and have used a month of it, should I go ahead and finish what I have, throw it away or give it to someone who might could use it (I love the colloquialism of that last phrase)?

Regardless, it is, as the whisper said, time for me to step up to the plate and be a man.

Tonight, I take an important step in that direction, having postponed this step because of a habit in my childhood of being ornery to keep a small distance between myself and my father’s stern shadow hanging over me, matching passive-aggressive response to passive-aggressive paternal discipline system.

What happens next is a series of decisions that divert/reduce childish/immature behaviour and encourage childlike wonder/amazement in accomplishing mature tasks.

All while focused on a major event 13286 days from now.

How will I include my sardonic/sarcastic/wry humour in this new direction I’m taking?  Perhaps by saying it’s time I pass the zeitgeist humour making to others so I can spend more time on timeless issues in which humour is incorporated at a less obvious level, in the whole shape of society rather just in sarcastic throwaway headline news.

I don’t have a ready answer and I’m learning it’s okay to say I don’t really know what’s going to happen next.

I am secure in knowing uncertainty is a key component of my future.

Is that the difference between meditation and prayer?

Is meditation simply accepting the here-and-now as it is and prayer a request for a certain change to occur?

No, that’s not it.  In both cases, gratefulness is accepting what is and being thankful for it.  Meditation may be a request for peace in a troubled life.

How about if I just lean my head back and take a quick nap?