A Midwinter Night’s Dream (Part One)
“You’ll understand when you get older.” That is what my parents always used to tell me. “Why can’t I wait until I get to a save point to start the dishes?” “Why do I have to knock on KTA’s door, when she doesn’t have to knock on mine?” “Why…”
“You’ll understand when you get older,” was always the answer. And not just from parents, but from KTA and her friends, preachers, older friends, parents’ friends etc. What they did not understand then was that I understood. I understood their reasons. I simply disagreed. A good portion of the time, I understood that there were no reasons and that people were simply running on instinct or emotion and reacting to circumstances or blindly following tradition.
I did not ask to learn, though I would have thought long and hard about any reasons, had they been given. I asked because it seemed that too few people truly did understand. And now that I am older, the degree to which some (and I stress the word “some”) of my beliefs which were predicted to change in five, ten, or fifteen years, have not changed is proof that age had little to do with it all.
You see, I am among those who believe that direct life experience is not necessary for either wisdom or knowledge. I was told so often that I would never understand so many things until I was of age to experience them. Now that I have had those experiences, I strongly disagree. Granted, I disagreed before, but now I can say that out loud. I disagree. I believe that I understood then.
To make this a little less abstract, let’s take a very simple example. I have never been to the Arctic. I have never experienced the extent of the cold that exists there. However, given what I have experienced, between freezers, Tennessee and Ohio cold seasons, air conditioners, walk-in coolers, and other sources of cold, along with images and videos, descriptions, and general common sense, I can reconstruct the conditions well enough in my own mind to accurately imagine what it must feel like to stand at the north pole. This is reinforced by my reaction to someone falling through ice into frozen water on TV.
Understanding the thrill of playing the World Cup Finals, the adventure of discovering an uncharted island, or the awe of looking my own child in the eye is, likewise, only a matter of putting the pieces together. I, in my short twenty-two years of existence, have experienced just about all there is to experience in life. However, I have not experienced it in nearly as many combinations or with nearly as much intensity as I will if I am graced with a few more decades of experiences. But, again, to understand, I need not have those experiences directly. I only need to use reason and what I have already experienced.
I had a dream last night. A dream that rocked my soul to its very core. It has left an emotion lingering which has consumed my thoughts up until this very point and, I anticipate, for a good long time to come. Last night all of my dreams came true and for a brief moment, it all made sense.