What If.....

As a child I always wondered what it would be like to have been born be someone else. I'd sprout hypotheticals constantly to my parents:

"What if I'd been born a beaver, where would I have lived?"

"If I'd been a deer, what would I eat?"

"If I was a tree, would it hurt to be cut down?"

I ruminated these possibilities over and over again. As young as 5 or 6, I thought I could have easily been born into any type of form, whether it was animal or plant or human. As an older child, I'd pretend I was a horse, or a deer in the dark woods, jumping over logs and thick brush. I'd lie under my trees for hours as they told me secrets. I'd stare at my Mother's green eyes, wondering what it would be like to be behind them, what it was like in her world, how she thought of what to say next.

I used to wonder about the universe, about the dimensions of time and space. I thought that our world wasn't at all as it seems, that it's full of secrets. I pictured my physical body on a treadmill, the world moving around me. How do we know what we see is real? Why do we trust our senses so much? These are the questions that plagued my young mind, even before I saw The Matrix.

Sometimes I wonder why I thought these things as a child. I've heard that when we are young, our minds are the closest to a collective conciousness, a force, God. Maybe children know more about the universe than scientists. I find that as I age, I don't think of these things anymore. I wonder what I'll cook for dinner tonight, or what chores I want to accomplish. I think of what bills I'll pay, or what vacation I'll plan next. Sometimes I wish my mind could lift itself from the petty, and focus on these bigger questions of this marvelous universe and world we lived in.

The time to start thinking is now....