Do you have the answers? Are you sure? It may come as a shocking surprise but not all that we think is true. It may be true for a while, but all things must come to an end. Perhaps information is not excluded from this.
An expert on smell and scent claims that not all things have a smell. He explains that for something to have a smell it must emit molecules the size of 16 carbon atoms or less in order for it to have smell. He sounds quite certain of this. However, I can not help but think of the koan ‘if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?’. If something emits a scent larger than 16 carbon atoms, a size too big for our olfactory system, is it void of scent or is it us that is void of perception? Here is where I, the layman with no scientific training, and the expert, with a vast repertoire of research, must part ways.
We are an audacious species. We know only what we can think. And we refute that which is incomprehensible or indiscernible. Yet that does not prove it does not exist. We have ghosts and spirits and psychic activity on the fringe of our accepted common knowledge to occupy the time of rebellious thought pioneers. But what lies beyond this fringe area? How vast is the space which exists beyond the universes? How vast is the space which exists beyond our thoughts?
As a child, we believe that mom and dad are gods. Later, our teachers become emperors and empresses. Hormones kick in, teenage rebellion overtakes our previous knowledge and mom, dad and teachers take an icarian dive. We grow even older and outrunning the cops changes from exciting to pure stupidity. Time passes and we slip from resenting our seniors to the asking those more experienced for advice. Age seeps in and, eventually, we end up liking elastic waistbands because they are more comfortable, more practical, like cataract sunglasses.
Answers change and we need to accept this. We need to acknowledge that what might have been perfect yesterday is only tolerable today and tomorrow we have no taste for it. That is only the tip of the iceberg. How much of what we know is absolutely wrong, and yet we all buy into this mass hypnosis from lack of energy or fear of going against the grain?
This could go on forever. But I know I have vinegar to buy and a lamp to fix and a few other errands to run. Perhaps I will see a ghost at the market. Perhaps I will levitate with my packages over the chaotic traffic. Perhaps I will discover that my reserves of love are three times the size of a molecule I can smell. I don’t have the answers, only observations.
