This little piece was inspired by two people: a friend from my Writers’ Group and my youngest
grandson, Joey, who was two years old, at the time. Now Joey believes everything, some of
which is not true, and my friend disbelieves everything, some of which is true. What do these
two individuals have in common?
A while back. the whole extended family went on an outing to Rocky Mountain National Park.
One of the highlights of the day was a close encounter with a large, bull moose on the path
around Sprog Lake. My grandson, Joey, was extremely impressed with the moose. Hell, I was
extremely impressed with so close a moose sighting. Anyway, we all talked about the moose
excitedly all the way home, and Joey has been pointing to the back yard ever since and telling
us that there is a moose in our back yard.
Most of the adults in the house found this very funny and took pleasure in reinforcing this
dilution that there was a moose in our back yard. We had all tacitly agreed to say that yes,
indeed, we see the moose in the yard, happily chewing on our grass. We figured it’s just one of
those things that a kid’s runaway imagination constructs to insert a big idea into his little
universe.
But then I got to thinking about it. Maybe what I see, when I look into my back yard and what
Joey sees, when looking at the same place, are not at all the same thing. I have learned to
compartmentalize what I know, or think I know about reality into neat, logically cohesive little
packages, and to frame my experience of reality within that outlook. I look out into the back
yard, and I can see some bushes, some grass, trees, a wooden fence and, across the green
space, a four lane highway, clearly in the way of our view of the mountains, beyond which I
cannot see Utah or Nevada or California, or the Pacific Ocean, although I know they are there.
You see, I know that the world is round, and that, since my line of sight is a straight line, I cannot
see anything that is below the horizon, that is, on another face of the curve.
But to Joey, the whole world - the whole universe is a blank slate, which he can experience all at
once with a wonder and a newness and an excitement of which I am rarely lucky enough to
catch a glimpse. When he looks in the back yard, he sees grass and flowers and birds and
clouds and rivers and lakes and forests and mountains...and moose, which he knows are there,
because, unlike me, he doesn’t have any preconceived notions about what he can or cannot
see or know.
It’s clear that the sights and sounds he has taken in and only begun to be able to articulate have
never left him. Somehow, I don’t know how, he knows that just because you can’t see
something, doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. Suddenly, I realized that maybe I’m the one with the
little universe, the smaller visual field, based on what I think I know about what is real and
possible.
It occurs to me that the fact that Joey is pointing out a back yard moose to everyone may not be
his dilution but my myopia in not being able to mentally grasp that there IS a moose in my back
yard, after all. It makes me think about all the things that I can’t see because my mind tells me I
shouldn’t be able to see them. My inability to see so many things eventually convinces me and
others that they are not there. I’m certain that people would consider me crazy, if I started
telling everyone that there is a moose in my back yard, but I don’t think that Joey is crazy, and
neither am I.
The most mind blowing and relaxing thing we could do today is to go home and appreciate the
moose in our back yards and to thank Joey and my friend for it.
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