Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Star Trek started as a show with the theme: “To seek out new life, and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before.” A handful of reoccurring crew members of the Star Ship Enterprise would travel the universe, going from galaxy to galaxy, experiencing strange new things every week, then wrap it up in an hour, and good luck next episode: no baggage, no continuing storylines, nor troublesome ancillary characters. Places also disappeared when no longer needed as a plot device. Remarkably, in a microcosm, you can use this same strategy for your own life. World, continent, state, community, even a Walmart, has become the equivalent of the universe for the Star Trek Enterprise strategy. Most people out there are aliens: they dress differently, have different values, even different logic; you can’t really interact with someone in a mask who thinks magically, and has goals that often perversely interfere with your own. Just listen to the conversations around you: half the time it’s in a different language, and if you can recognize English, nobody is saying anything you even begin to comprehend. Instead, you should view a shopping experience as beaming down. For example, humans will totally ignore you during a single visit to a restaurant, but if you begin to frequent the place, you risk becoming entangled. This strategy extends to all life’s experiences: you plan your arrival to be as unobtrusive as possible, accomplish the task you had in mind while avoiding local interaction then escape back to the Enterprise to prepare for next week’s mission; and certainly don’t bring any aliens back with you.