The Cosmic Treehouse
A Simple Kind of Life
When I was 3 years old, life seemed quite simple, easy to understand and filled with fun. My attentions were on garden life; watching the moles tunnel around the garden and catching salamanders and newts. On a good day, I caught a dozen. I ate the strawberries and gooseberries that grew wild in our yard.
None of the kids where I lived were allowed to play with me so I played with the life around me. I never understood why but since it was always that way, I never questioned it. It was just a fact of life. I later found out that the "reason" was because I was a Jew. I didn’t know what that meant but I
written by Geoffrey
Comments Widget
didn’t really care. I was happy with the chickens in the garden chicken-coop, the moles and the newts with an occasional frog thrown in. As I said, life was simple.
It was this childhood experience of reality being something different from “reasons” that helped me form my mistrust of “reasons”. What someone did was far more important to me than what they said, or how they explained why they did what they did. I realize now that therein lies the roots of my distrust of politics; too much explaining how and why.
As a child, if they’d play with me, that was good enough for me. If they'd eat wild strawberries or gooseberries with me, we were friends. As an adult, if someone will have dinner with me, that’s all I need to satisfy any questions I might have. So when people ask whether I’m voting for McCain or Obama, I ask them who they’d rather invite to their house for dinner, McCain or Obama. That answers it for me and I hope it does for you.
Geoffrey
