Thanksgiving is a time for being grateful, a time of appreciation, a time to look forward to a table loaded with a feast.
It also happens to be a good time for family members to get together and try their best not to bring up politics.
Among other guests, I had three little cousins over this Thanksgiving. Little cousins are the best. Not only do they make me ponder why I want to have kids in the future, but they are also great reminders of the grandeur and ease of my youth.
One highlight of the night included my six year old cousin asking me a simple question.
“Hey,” she said, nudging a tryptophan-induced me out of staring into space. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” I replied.
She straightened herself up in her chair and looked me directly in the eyes.
“How was the Earth made?”
Though no one else saw it, my face obviously reflected that I’ve been caught off guard. Before I could respond, little cousin was back at it.
“And then what made the thing that made the Earth? When I ask someone where something came from, I ask where that other thing came from then.”
Oh boy.
I’m both impressed and surprised. I raised my eyebrows, pursed my lips and tried to avoid eye contact with her. What do I say, I thought?
In the end, my response was the most exaggerated and anticlimactic shrug. I don’t know.
Oh, but I did know. I knew of the Big Bang; I knew of the Genesis creation story; I knew of life emerging from some primordial soup billions of years ago. But how come I couldn’t tell her what I knew?
Luckily, she took an interest in my phone. Meanwhile, I reflected on what just happened. Did a six year old really just ask a legal adult where the Earth came from?
And did said adult really just cop out of an answer?
I could come up with excuses as to why I didn’t answer. I may have been afraid to give a complicated answer that her still-developing brain wouldn’t understand. I may have been afraid of giving her false information; earlier that night, I convinced her that I am in the “13th grade” opposed to being a “college freshman”. I could have pulled off the slightly-irritated adult persona: listen, you are extremely adorable, but dammit, stop asking so many questions.
I was afraid of trying to answer that question, and I guess that realization is quite a blessing. Questions like that can be a bit intimidating to ask, and they should be asked. Science isn’t science without criticism. Advancements wouldn’t be made if we were right all the time.
If everything went unquestioned, the world wouldn’t look like it does now. There wouldn’t be a race for betterment, for an easier, more energy efficient solution; we wouldn’t have conflicts challenging various ideas and peoples; what would be the point of schooling if we couldn’t use what we learned to challenge ideas, or even challenge the ideas that we have learned?
So keep on being curious, keep asking the questions that make people uncomfortable. Scare people into finding the answers, into asking more questions and not being afraid to fail. Scare people the way my cousin scared me and left me speechless and appreciative of the curiosity of young ones.
Like I said above, little cousins are the best.
