I’m a bit of a nerd If you’d like to give that particular invisible stream of ‘me-ness’ a name.
My brain works in weird and wonderful ways (like all of our brains do). Perhaps, though, I glorify the magnificence of the human condition a little more than most— I can admit to that much.
I’ve never really understood why humans aren’t more fascinated by the wonder that is these truly magnificent bodies we’re built into.
How they can break, and heal, as if by magic.
How they can mix ingredients (male and female) to induce a process of growth and birth so miraculous it’s incomprehensible how any human has actually existed, ever.
How the light in my eyes can tell you how in love with you I really am, and how my words do not have to tell you a thing about the way that particular love feels inside of my body.
Anyway, I know:
I’m a bit of a nerd.
But don’t you guys think it is ALL so TRULY AMAZING?
I sure do, and that’s just the human body parts of it all.
I’ve just read a blog post that made me dig a little into the way I feel about all this human-ness at a deeper level, particularly the way I feel about the ‘invisible’ things of life.
Time.
The internet.
Love (or any emotion, really).
It all lives in the sea of nothing and everything, doesn’t it?
Energy. Nothing and everything.
My Dad always used to throw out this line—and laugh at his own hilarity, actually, as I often laugh at my own. I completely blame him. For that, and for my large selection of ‘funny but not really funny’ jokes.
Anyway, the line he used to toss out there was ‘time is an abstract concept.’
At the time (ha ha ha :P) —I was somewhere between eight and thirteen, I’d imagine— I looked at him, eyebrow raised. What on earth was he going on about? Time wasn’t abstract. Time was clearly time.
Part of me agrees still, that time is a very real thing.
There is a clock up there. Today is Saturday.
But is there really ‘time’ because there is a clock up there?
And is it really Saturday, guys?
And am I, indeed, ‘a nerd’? (Wink)
I’ll be back tomorrow with some more waffling, I think.
I couldn’t tell you how old I was. Seven or eight, maybe. However old I was, though, I was old enough to know what I believed. And what I absolutely did not believe was that my Mum had been killed by Jack the Ripper in a past life, like her meditation session had seemingly ‘revealed’. Ridiculous. Impossible. Absurd.
But I’ll get back to Jack a little later, shall I?
First: some background.
As I’ve mentioned in some of my earlier posts, I was a highly sensitive child. A soft little muffin, and a deep one at that. But what I also seemed to be was an ‘old soul’, and none of the adults in my life ever were quite able to explain how that part of me came about.
The ‘old soul-ness’ kept popping up all the way through my teenage years and manifested in all sorts of different ways. Perhaps one of the most profound came in the form of a monologue I performed in the year eleven drama class play. It was the science teacher who mentioned it. He said—in fact, his whole entire body said— it was surely impossible for a sixteen-year-old to really know the feeling of ‘glass grinding in my spirit.’
‘How did you know?’ he asked, his eyes far more serious now than they had been when he explained to me that a Bunsen burner works best when it’s actually switched on.
‘Umm. I’m not sure,’ I said, slightly alarmed by the intensity of his usually playful eyes. It was an odd thing, I agreed, and honestly, I didn’t know where the depth of my performance had come from. But after seeing those eyes of his change so drastically…part of me wondered.
And part of me has wondered ever since.
So let’s get back to Jack then, shall we, and how he very rudely slaughtered my Mother once upon a lifetime’s past. Because it sounds bloody ridiculous, doesn’t it? Sounds impossible and absolutely, entirely absurd.
Well…yes. It does.
But I have to tell you, I’m not so sure anymore. As a matter of fact, I have been very seriously rethinking the nature of just about everything in this old universe of ours. And I’m thinking, now, that maybe—just very slightly maybe—my Mum might have been right about Jack.
What if the unexplainable really could be explained by remembering further back in time? What if the uncanny childhood wisdom that so many young children seem to possess, actually does come from someplace they have actually been before? Like…another life, perhaps?
This world of ours is filled with magic. I’ve always believed it, because, quite frankly, there have been some things in my life that have defied any sort of rational explanation, no matter how hard I’ve tried to make sense of it all. Coincidences so coincidental they would put even the most wrinkly-lipped skeptic into a permanent state of bewilderment.
Yeah. The universe, hey? What’s with all the quiet nudges? The ones that have us turning left, when we’d only ever thought to turn right? What’s with all the giggles? You must have heard them; those funny little universe giggles, the ones that stop us in our tracks and ask us to wonder a little more.
Remember that time the phone rang and you just knew it was your Mum because you’d been about to call her? Or the time your toddler sneezed out all the goopy things—in the most public of places, not a tissue box in sight—and there just happened to be a tissue in your jacket pocket, even though you didn’t put it there? (Cough. Me, yesterday. How dearly I love you, universe.)
You must have wondered, just like I do—what’s it all about? And what ‘box’ do we put all the wonder into when it starts to wobble about within these very rational minds of ours? I’ll be the first to say it: I don’t know. I don’t know the questions, I don’t know the answers. But I’ll never stop wondering about it all, that magic that spills through the cracks of life, often when we need it most.
So. What do you think? Should we just shush up our rational minds for a bit and just fly with all the magic that happens? Should we just do that? Today, tomorrow, whenever the universe wills it, so?
I think we should. I think we totally, and absolutely should.