“Why didn’t I think of that?” has traveled through my mind,…silently and aloud more times than I can remember. The sparks that ignited that thought are long forgotten. Yet, the flush of excitement in those moments still ignites new ideas and interests in widening my awareness of the infinite connections we all spark in one another over the endless moments in life.
As the years have piled one upon the other, I find a new flow of allowing my mind to wander curiously into thoughts outside the box. It is fun to question ideas, thoughts, and far-out possibilities as they begin to wear down the deep tread marks of history handed down generation after generation, only because they have…“been handed down, generation after generation.”
For instance, as a young child, I was told never to pick up a baby bird that has fallen out of its nest, or the mother would abandon it. Yet, growing up in the country, I often found a baby bird that had fallen to the ground. Curious, I began to search for the nest, then gently picked up the chick and put it back into the nest. I then moved back away and patiently watched what would happen. I did this many times before letting my mother know my actions. I observed that not only did the mother move back to the nest, the father did, and with some species, a whole gang of the family came to welcome the chick home.
After many visits and observations of discovering the baby bird story was not true, I began to question nearly everything I was told. “Little Miss Why” became a moniker.
This early association of “why” has never diminished. However, the questions of ”why” have moved from a young child’s challenge to adult edicts to an exciting journey of learning and questioning. These questions led me into many avenues of education, travel, and a multitude of experiences that contradict old stories and belief systems. I still question ideas and proclamations of “facts” that are merely unproven opinions and disproven science. Repeating assertions from the past without question inhibits our ability to move forward.
The biology I learned in high school was top of education at that time. Yet, when I got to college, new technologies and studies disproved much content in those earlier classes. The science of how a cell works or an atom receives and sends signals is way beyond what the most advanced science declared just forty years ago. Scientists, philosophers, poets, writers, and artists reach inward to discover new ideas, new possibilities, new avenues of community, interactions, and world peace.
The creativity among those looking forward rather than backward is the force that stimulates new creations and deeper awareness of infinite possibilities as we think into the future. I am thinking about that. Chandler © March 12, 2020