That’s perhaps the crux of the matter. We tend to condemn each other without ever being able to really know what the world looks like from the other person’s perspective, and if we do, we often sing a different tune.

Years ago, I was speaking to a friend over the phone. We were trying to arrange meeting for tea, but she was finding this difficult as she had a small baby (he’s only a few months younger than my second, Lara). At a stage she said: “This is not easy, you know. I have a baby.”

There was a short silence, while all the little places where she had no understanding of my challlenges in the past played through my mind. “I know,” I answered then. “I have two.”

That was a pretty satisfying experience. (c;

I’ll be sure to follow your advice.

It wasn’t until college (after discovering the works by Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins) that I saw how exciting and wonderful science was. The unfortunate problem with science education is that they teach and train accountants rather than poets. Science requires the dedication to details that an accountant brings to their work, but unless you can imagine new frontiers of knowledge, the questions you ask will be stilted and lifeless. Science needs more dreamers to share the beauty and excitement of what it means to be alive in a world that’s evolving.

So keep learning, keep exploring and keep questioning. The world is too wonderful not to find out all you can about it.

***
Surveying his shattered and splintered ship, Baskin pronounced it wrecked, glanced at his first mate, Robbins, and began a careful assessment of his new surroundings: sand as white as whipped cream, lush greenery layered like a cake against the fruit-filled treeline, a vanilla sky blended into an evening as dark as chocolate with a pie-shaped moon, prompting him to wonder aloud, “what’s so unappetizing about being stranded on a desserted island?”
***
That’s pure class.