When I was younger, I played an odd game with myself. I would
stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror until my face became entirely
unfamiliar to me, the way a word loses its meaning if you say it over and over
and over.
The shift was definitive: one minute I was the little girl I thought I
was; the next I was staring at an odd conglomeration of shapes and colors
poured into girl form. The feeling was exhilarating, mind-altering—the six
year-old’s Jim Beam.
I’ve tried this experiment as an adult, and the shift never
occurs. I’m just too accustomed to taking for granted certain facts about the
world—such as, the reflection in the mirror = me. But one of the reasons kids
can be such good company is that they remind us to question the most mundane
facts about life.
On Babble’s Kids Say the Cutest Things, a three-year-old
wondered, “Why do I live in my body?” To even begin to come up with this
question requires such an unself-conscious curiosity about the world that it
allows room for ALL possibilities. I mean, what the heck, why can’t we live inside an
airplane or a warm, lazy blanket? Why couldn’t three-year-old Chase live inside his
brother’s body or his best friend's? Would he still be Chase?
The hard part is explaining that some of the best questions
don’t have answers.
Photo: Daan Stringer
