Shadow life

In this vast and wild existence, I’m often humbled by what we’ve figured out: the tides of the ocean, why weather systems form, how to set and heal broken bones. It’s incredible, really, to think of what we’ve taught ourselves over so many years, the calculations and the evolutions and the discoveries.

In that, I admire the seekers, the researchers, those who are curious enough to dive in and study, focused and unrelenting. Collectively, we inherit knowledge, and then learn more, and then that knowledge changes over time into something completely new. Eventually, someone will prod it further, and then further, until it grows again.

Still, one of my favorite things in life is to think about the abundance of mysteries that persist in our world. The ocean, the stars, our own bodies: there’s so much that we don’t know, and I love that. It seems endless, the ability to pick something we can’t comprehend, and make it our own, just because of a question that lodges in our hearts.

But with all that said, there must be things we don’t even know to question, as if our imaginations – at least by adulthood – aren’t strong enough to withstand such possibilities. Maybe our stuffed animals really do hold meetings once the children have gone to bed. Maybe the trees catch up on their gossip after the hikers have meandered by. Maybe, just maybe, the shadows detach from their anchors when no human is in sight, and wander the world on their own, seeing what they can see.

It makes me wonder what we miss, in the name of what we know to be true. What might we learn, if we let ourselves forget the confines of understanding? What might we know, if we allowed ourselves to know nothing at all?

It really is hard to imagine.