Unicorns, Cotton Balls And A Blacksmith With A Limp…

It’s fascinating. Sitting in a plane, looking out the window, far above everything. The clouds underneath, like little cotton balls. They seem so fluffy. And I feel taken back to my childhood thoughts, wondering how it must feel to touch the clouds. Playing with the idea of bouncing on them, softly, from one to the other.

I allow myself to ignore what I learned and wonder if they feel like cotton candy. Just less sticky. If, instead of cold, they might be cozy warm?

A child’s fantasy is something so wonderful. Such a shame that through learning about everything we lose so many of the “silly” ideas. Just like being able to bounce around on clouds or the idea that they must feel like cotton candy. Right now I actually wonder why cotton candy wasn’t named cloud candy…

Education is a wonderful thing. You gain so much. But you lose so much too. Like the innocent ideas, the belief in magical things like unicorns or flying dragons.

And while I sit here and wonder about the clouds, unicorns and dragons the words of a guide that chatted to us while we visited an exhibition come back to my mind. He mentioned something interesting while we talked about minerals and how copper and gold are usually found in close proximity and with it also arsenic because they all like each other. He brought up the Greek God of blacksmiths and how they were portrait with a limp. He was portrait with a limp because blacksmiths often walked with a limp. And they did so because the limp is the first physical sign of arsenic poisoning.

So while before the limp was a sign of someone strong, someone people would look up to, would prey to, education turned it all into weakness. Suddenly it got crystal clear that the limp was not a sign of strength but of a disease. It was a sign of their body slowly being destroyed.

Of course this all helps us now to run into the same issues. Thankfully. And yet it kind leaves an aftertaste. So many things we learned. So many things that have provided us with a better, healthier life. We have learned to cure diseases, understand that the world is a globe and not a plate, that clouds are made of water and that unicorns don’t exist. We have seen some of the deepest parts of the ocean and ventured out to space. We understand the human body better than ever and are even able to create clones. We can 3D print items, Computer talk to us, cars drive by themselves.

And yet there is so much that we don’t know anything about.

While I look at the clouds and the way the light breaks in the ocean somewhere far away I hope that we will never lose the awe for the planet we live on, the stars, planets and moons above us, the magic of life itself. And I hope that we will always find something that makes us believe in the magic of all of it. Without feeling the need of having to explain everything in all details…