Reasoning

(Rodrigo Peñaloza, June 2016)

Kids have a very logical way of thinking. I dare to claim that their phantasies are an expression of sheer rationality, whereas our adult rationality not rarely is nothing else than pure phantasy.

When my sister was little, she expressed her acute rationality when she saw my father buying a new car displayed in the store. She asked herself, how would the car be wrapped up in paper and fastened with a red lace, which, obviously, should be very big... and red, because laces are red. In my case, when adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I used to answer I wanted to be green grass. This explains why I want my body to be buried below the shadow of a big tree in a plain green field. I don’t care about stone cemeteries. I love trees. I thought we could be anything we wanted. I just wanted to be part of nature. Nobody told me the possible options open to me were only what people use to call professional activities.

Nowadays I reason the same when I read "what’s on your mind?" on facebook. Whenever I read it, my instinct is to write "I don’t know!", then my reason moves a step forward to contextualize the question. Being adult is being able to contextualize language out of experience. However, this doesn’t change anything: if I want my body to be buried under a tree, this is my humanity.