my sister, hope, six:
often, as a small child, I was told to make up my mind, and I find myself indecisive to this day. I am not indecisive because I lack an opinion (although, of course, I do sometimes). most of the time, my indecisiveness is simply because I can't make up my mind. the proper evidence isn't there. there are too many considerable considerations to be considered, too many complexities to examine. I am jealous of the ability of most modern men to automatically utter 'yes, no, right, wrong,' answers that come deep from within an unrealized, unscrutinized morality.
I remember flying with my father on his business trips, and while he reviewed papers and sipped ginger ale, I would look out the window and think, 'how did it ever come to this?'. superimposed over the tall buildings, the fast cars, the flippant walk of strangers in plastics, I could plainly see our ancestors, crawling around in the dirt, pallid, pimpling, appalling, pawing at one another. nature, red in tooth and claw...
"how did it ever come to this?" I asked my father one day, and he sighed and put his folder down.
"well, do you know what amino acids are?" he asked. I nodded. "well," he continued. "it is believed that heterotrophs were the first lifeform on earth, living in the oceans and absorbing the organic material that was caused by reactions to things like amino acids, blah blah blah..." and I would stare out the window, at the coalescing blobs of green and gray, spiced sunlight twirling through clouds drawn out like spun sugar, highways criss-crossing over one another, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen. no purity. only property and posessions, trespassers being prosecuted.
"... and winston churchill died, although his parrot lived to a ripe old age," my father would finish, hours later, resuming his paper. to my father life was easily chop-chopped into precise black-and-white segments, as brisk and compartmentalized as an icy icy ice-tray. but dad, life still seems so overwhelmingly complicated.
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