SCIENCE OF MIND THE GAP

“By convention there is color, by convention sweetness, by convention bitterness, but in reality there are atoms and space.”                                                         --Democritus (c. 460 – c. 400 B.C.)

There are spaces between everything.  We know that from basic science lessons.  Molecules are not connected.  Nothing is solid.  There are gaps between everything.  Synapses.  I am a creature who is most alive when hovering over a gap, landing, surveying, and taking off again.

The Unknown is what I know best. It’s reliable.  I know it’s there.   For me, the power and discoveries that exist in the unknown beckon me…onward!  My curiosity about the magic and mysteries and information that lie ahead repel any sense of fear.  I embrace the idea of the unknown.  It propels me into the adventures that create my life.   There are those who are reluctant to explore the dark, distant, and indistinct aspects of life on our planet.  Many cling to the edges of free-floating fear and live lives dictated by conservative convention and practical rules rather than by the concrete knowledge that nothing is solid.  Gaps are everywhere.  They divide and join everything. And falling into gaps and climbing free and leaping safely over gaps are some of the reasons I love my life so much.

The ground isn’t solid.  Marriage isn’t solid, not all friendships are solid and not many careers are solid.  It’s simply and scientifically true: The Universe is not very solid.  And by extension, solids are only relatively more solid than liquids which are only relatively more liquid than gas…

At this particular crossroads in my more than seven-decades-long life. I am focusing on the other side of some identified and unidentified gaps. And I am preparing to journey to them, explore them, cross them. 

I want to breathe my way around the world again.  I want to excite my senses with that which is still foreign to me.  I want to catapult myself into new realms of thought. 
I want to navigate my way over, under, around, and through the gaps in my understanding of the world and world cultures. 

Sometimes, in my dreams and fantasies, I sense--or imagine--hands reaching across the seas, inviting me to be part of something bigger than the good Life I have here in New Mexico with my community of friends and family and activities.  At seventy-seven years of age, I recognize that parts of me are moving (slowly, surely) towards an inner stillness…and still, I find myself driven by a strong voice of longing and a recurring caw, caw, calling from that familiar unknown; the mysterious unexplored—commanding me: “Move.  Onward.  Now!”  

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