“Pops!” The salutation is not limited to the emphatic, even rambunctious hellos of reunion after a few months of separation on opposite coasts, but also, when I’m already here, as a request for my attention to some matter of apparent urgency to him. Say, a proposal for my participation in some imaginary game involving fire trucks and daring rescues of pets, or for some contemplative question heavy on his 3- and 2/3-year-old mind.
A couple of nights ago, on a drive down the highway, it was the latter, and the question was, “Pops! Why are there trees?”
Laughing about this with my daughter as she was driving, she told me that a few days prior, Kai asked her, ‘Mama, what happens when people die?'”
That particular question had not occurred in a very long while to my 74- and 2/3-year-old mind, which I noticed got the tiniest bit flustered in grappling with the challenge of forming a coherent answer. Speaking sooner than I should have, I responded with something along the lines of, “Well, a seed gets buried under the ground and then the ground gets watered from the rain and the sun shines on it, and then it grows into a tree, but it takes a really long time.”
Hmmfff.
Immediately, I protested to myself that such a profound question deserves something more than such a limp answer.
It’s not that it was wrong as such, though it was admittedly light on detail. But a “How” answer to a “Why” question simply does not meet the moment, does not address the foundational curiosity that gives rise to the “Why” in the wool-gathering mind of a toddler as he’s being driven down the highway gazing at a tree-suffused landscape zipping by at 70 miles per hour.
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But then again, what else might I have said? What I felt in the moment, which I knew would also not meet his moment at all, was intense awareness for just how simple (and profound!) are the basic philosophical questions that have bedeviled learned souls for millennia.
My grandson Kai’s particular granular query about trees opened up to its larger, macro foundation that was first posed by the 17th century German polymath philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (the inventor of calculus, among other impenetrable disciplines for my math-challenged brain): “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
Kai then verified his previous question’s foundational status with a subsequent query a minute or two later: “Pops! Why are there stars?”
The kid is on a roll, citing the kind of material—trees and stars—that just happen to be among the go-to objects of all primordial human wonder.
I’m guessing the same questions had to occur to Leibniz as well (maybe even by the time he, too, was 3- and 2/3 years old?) before he put forth its underpinning something-nothing question that has given philosophers enough rope to tie themselves in exquisite knots over the past several centuries.
Laughing about this with my daughter as she was driving, she told me that a few days prior, Kai had asked her, “Mama, what happens when people die?”
Oh-kayyyyyyy….
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For the record, Leibniz was a God-fearing Lutheran who believed in a conventional afterlife of heaven or hell, depending…
He complemented those beliefs with elaborate philosophical arguments for the existence of God that he considered self-evidently correct, but which were comprised of various premises and assumptions that have done little to quell all manner of argumentation among philosophers (not to mention theologians) both professional and armchair, ever since.
And to which my own immediate response is that our man Leibniz might have done better for himself sticking to math.
But of course, that is churlish, as well as contrary to my sincerely held belief that I had better be wary of all my beliefs (except that one) and attempt, as best possible, to live and think in a state of epistemological humility, in which I know just enough to know how little I know about most everything.
“Does God exist?”
“I’m gonna have to get back to you on that, Bro.”
A couple of years ago, I enjoyed a rare visit with a dear childhood friend whom I’ve kept in touch with only very intermittently over the years. He’s a good man with little in the way of academic or intellectual knowledge, but he possesses a huge heart informed by a basic Christian faith in his redeemer. As I enjoyed a meal with him and his wife, he suddenly popped the question, “Andy, do you believe in God, and that you’ll be saved by his son Jesus Christ?”
I looked them both straight in the eye and replied, “I don’t, but I believe in the power of those stories to transform human lives, and to the degree that they do, I think it is beautiful and sacred and worthy of my deep respect.”
That was enough for them, not a whit of judgement or fear for my soul evident, and we drifted onto other matters.
But I’ve thought of that conversation several times these past days when reflecting on the questions rattling around in Kai’s head. Someday, he’s going to hear and interpret and adapt to one or another story (multiples of them, if he’s like most people), by which he will explain, initially to himself, his beliefs, hopes, doubts, questions, and ponderings of the night.
So many stories. He will be awash in them, human beings having been around a good long time now, the stories just piling up with each succeeding generation. Supernatural stories, scientific stories, hero stories, villain stories, fairy tales, tragedies, scriptures, psychological tomes, fictions and frivolities of every stripe.
All of them traceable to questions we ask in our age of bright-eyed innocence, and about which we can then, if we manage to retain a sense of openness and wonder, spend a lifetime trying to finesse a response. The task is worthy, and hopefully never quite finished if we can manage to avoid the fraternal twins of certitude and cynicism that seek to derail our journeys of the heart at every turn.
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I believe Kai might be ready for Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. There are twelve stories, all far more interesting than Leibnitz or his pet calculus. Why does a camel have a hump? He was punished for being lazy. Whenever he was asked to do a task, he would just say “Humph” and that’s what he got. A hump. Why does an elephant have a trunk? This baby elephant was very curious about this Crocodile. The baby elephant got to close to the Croc who then caught hold of the baby elephant’s nose, stretching it out like a snake. Kipling had it all over the Bible.
I appreciate that, Robert, will be on a gift list for one occasion or other in the near future…
What a terrific response to the direct question from your (and mine) friend regarding conventional belief in God and Jesus. I’ve always dismissed those who are waist deep in religion, but you’re correct in saying, essentially, if it works for you, then I gotta give you your props.
Tough to dodge those kids questions…I recall deflecting them as a strategy, saying, “How ’bout some ice cream?”
Thanks, Moon; everything changed for me, can’t remember how long ago now, when I came to view religion thru the lens of story, or “narrative,” the more au courant term in ascendance today. Religions have historically been pretty effective, or maybe “efficient,” is a better term, at packaging their stories in easily digestible forms, with clear goals of obedience to certain norms along with worship/wonder for the amazing nature of sheer existence as the gateway to a heavenly hereafter. Problem was they became institutionalized as real-world fact rather than fable. As time went on and more rationally-based/scientific thinking came into play, the fact part became impossible for many people to believe in, and, if I may bastardize an old maxim here, the transformative aspect of the fable (the baby) got thrown out with fact’s bathwater.
I think we’re still in the middle of the turmoil that has wrought on the human psyche, as the rationalists fail to appreciate the power and human need for story and the literalists (the rabid Christian nationalists here and the jihadists over yonder) cling to their belief that the stories are historical facts that ALL human beings need to follow to the letter or else…
In the end, religion is a vehicle, and its “performance” needs to be judged on whether its adherents become better, more generous and loving people. That is certainly the case with our mutual friends, and that being the case, it is certainly not for me to disabuse them of the beliefs and practices that have gotten them there.