2000 Light Years From Home
2000 LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME
I don’t remember if I asked to take philosophy in my first semester of college or if it was by chance that it was part of my liberal arts cluster. Either way, I was happy to be there.
My philosophy professor taught me about the great philosophers and their thought. He gave names to ideas that had occurred to me spontaneously, for these ideas, I learned, were perennial. What occurred in my mind had previously occurred in the minds of generations of thinkers. Wonderers I should say. For I wondered a lot in my childhood.
Some people are wanderers
and some people are wonderers.
Wonderers are the ones who wander within.
I wondered many things about the cosmos and consciousness long before I knew the words cosmos and consciousness. An early memory has me sitting in the back seat of the car next to my little sister. Mom and Dad up front. I thought about the universe expanding. The stars and planets and empty black space. Everything getting further and further away from everything else. Would it keep expanding forever? Or would it reach a limit, like a rubber band, where it could expand no more, where it could only snap back to its original point? And if it did contract to this point, would expansion begin anew? Would the Big Bang happen again, the result of the pressure of that implosion? And would everything unfold the same as before, or would it be different the next time? Would I be here, sitting in the back seat of the car next to my little sister?
It wasn’t the science that fascinated me. It was the implications for the conscious beings that lived in the cosmos that fascinated me. I wandered within a lot. Many years later, Professor Rossman would introduce me to the tools of language and logic that would allow me to articulate my thoughts and my questions – my wonderings.