I remember as a child whenever a
grown up would tell me one of their truisms, I would counter with my own
question, “Why?” I also remember this frustrating anyone fortunate enough to
get caught in my unending spiral of asking why. Needless to say I was not
honored for my incessant questioning. In fact, I was severely reprimanded for
it. I was called smart-mouthed or I was being fresh and not minding my elders.
This was truly very confusing for me as a child. If I was expected to learn,
should I not question what I did not know?
Fast-forward to today, I realize
why I wore out my elders with my questions. As children, we wonder, we imagine,
and we question. As adults, we stop doing all of those in exchange for living a
day-to-day existence based on unconscious thinking and default behaviors. It is
no wonder we consider inquisitive children as nuisances to be silenced. Although
we have been divinely gifted with the sweetness of wonder, the beauty of
imagination and the power to question, society frowns upon these gifts if we
use them instead of conforming and living on autopilot.
Fortunately for me, I may have
aged in number, but I never grew up! Oh, there were a few years there when I
slipped into the role of being a grown-up. I was in step with the rat race –
walking, talking, working, eating and sleeping as everyone else did. Then, it
dawned on me; I was part of the rat race, but that only made me another rat!
The uniqueness and divinely given gifts I possess were being, well, wasted;
wasting away to a life of conformity and mediocrity. At that awakening, I
became aware that I was still gifted with wonder, imagination and full of
powerful questions. This was the beginning of a divine transformation.
“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why...
I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”
~ Robert Kennedy
As I had as a child, I now live
in wonder, using my marvelous imagination, asking powerful and life-altering
questions. The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said we must live the
questions; in everything, just live the questions. We must not worry about the
answers; that’s the grown-ups job – to have all the answers. The answers will
come, exactly when we are ready for them – after we have wondered and imagined
all of the endless possibilities.
As a Spiritual Animator, it is my
job to bring life to what has no life and the most wonderful way to do this is
to ask, “Who am I?” “Who are you?” Just as the smoking caterpillar asked Alice, “who are you?” and Alice had no sufficient answer. I would wager
that most of us have no sufficient answer as well. Yet, the most asked question
in polite society is “What do you do?” Remember, we are human beings, not human
doings – or are we?
Mythologist Joseph Campbell once
said you must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is
waiting for you. When conscious awareness has reached you and you remember who
you are, then ask yourself, “Who am I becoming?”
Never cease wondering, never
cease imagining, and never cease questioning. Why? Because when you do, you
have also ceased living your life to the full. Life is all about the wonders of
one moment to the next moment. It is about imagining infinite possibilities and
asking extraordinary questions about those possibilities. This is how great art
and architecture are created; how beautiful fashion and home décor are created;
how beautiful music is composed; and how we move from one moment to the next –
through wonder, imagination and powerful questions.
