A few days ago, my son, eyelids drooping after a long bedtime story, perked up so that he could ask a question. Background: he’s been telling us all — his mother, his sister, and me — that we are, depending on his humor, tigers, leopards, and, most recently, tiger sharks. He looked at me quizzically — he would have cocked an eyebrow, were he capable of that — and asked, “Papa, where did the first tiger shark come from?”
How does a little mind come up with a question like this? I tried to tell him that though he is our son, he is a little different from me and from his mother, just as his sister is a little different from him. Creatures change and develop over time, I told him. And then, the natural question: how much different does something have to be to be really different? When does one creature become another? I didn’t have a good answer for him.
The world, to a four-year-old, is open; all questions are allowed.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we all thought a little more like four-year-olds?
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