This will be my first post, and as this is my first post here, I thought I would share with you my first memory of my own investigation to try to understand who I am, why I am here, and the questions around life the universe and everything. I remember ...
This will be my first post, and as this is my first post here, I thought I would share with you my first memory of my own investigation to try to understand who I am, why I am here, and the questions around life the universe and everything.
I remember it was night, and I was lying on my back on the wild lawn in the darkness, just outside of the pool of light from the A-framed house my dad built with his own hands on a stretch of African soil next to a smallish mountain, looking up at the billions of stars whispering in the night. From inside the house floated the sound of my mother playing piano and I was wondering if I may not just be a dog, having a dream that it is a human.
Dogs were part of my frame of reference as my parents are animal lovers and we always had an assortment of dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, ducks and I remember a cow being part of the family picture as well. There were short-stay creatures such as a black talking crow and a white crested eagle my mother somehow became the caretaker of, until they chose to return to the wild which were not very far away, there at the foot of the Magalliesburg Mountains.
"No," I then thought, looking at the dome of stars, "I think I might be a tiny creature inside a giant's snow globe, sitting on an enormous shelf in a gigantic giant house. " I paraphrase of course. There is no way I remember the precise thought, I must have been nine or ten, as that was when those mountains were the backdrop of my life. But I do remember the train of thought, as then my heart ached because of my inability to create such beautiful music as my mother - she tried to teach me to play - but it just didn't take. And now, as I am here, I am convinced I can still experience that same feeling of awe as I closed my eyes and surrendered to the sound, as the music folded around me with the warm summer-night air of the South-African high veldt.
And I thought "Imagine, I couldn't hear this .."
Imagine, no-one in the world could hear, the evocative beauty of music would have no meaning - if no-one could see, the passion embedded in each work of art would go unnoticed. And then I opened my eyes and looked up at the stars, and as I was engulfed in the immensity of the African night I somehow in my nine-year old brain formulated the meaning of my life as it still stands today - that I am the observer, the wonderer. The one who listens in rapture to the music, who loses herself in the beauty of works of art, and books, and sculptures and photos and plants and insects and birds and trees and stars and humans. And as one only truly appreciate something once you understand it, I am the one who asks questions, the one who will constantly learn and teach, so that I can learn more. To seek the mystery, to remain in awe.