the universe doesn’t have laws, it has habits

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist after (s)he grows up.”
— Pablo Picasso

Ah, the eternal dilemma. Soren Kierkegaard tells us we are all born originals, but we die as copies. The Omnivore would like to present a concept that explains how this (insidious, but perhaps not irreversible) process happens. Deepak Chopra calls it ‘ premature cognitive commitment‘. We are heavily conditioned, from birth, to act and react in a way we have learned is ‘right’. Children are spontaneous, imaginative, creative and adventurous. Enter school. The teacher (and only the teacher) is keeper of the ‘right’ answer (and usually there is only one). You shouldn’t contribute when you feel excited, but wait until you are called upon (usually long after the excitement has worn off). Take a number, don’t trust your own judgment, someone else is always ‘right’. Don’t, can’t, and shouldn’t become won’t, shan’t and wouldn’t.

“Common sense is a collection of prejudices acquired by age 18”
— Albert Einstein

The ‘closing of the human mind’ process is also called Reduction Instruction by my brilliant friends over at the Circle Project. “If you want to kill imagination, it is an easy process of reduction. Simply hunker down, grab on to what you know, and make more rules“. We take this blinkered thinking with us into adulthood, and use the filters we have developed to take in the billions of messages and signals we are required to process, instantly and constantly. While a frame of reference is useful and even necessary, it should be fluid, changing, and evolving. THE UNIVERSE DOESN’T HAVE LAWS, IT HAS HABITS. And while we may live by rules we have learned are ‘right’, the rules of others are equally ‘right’ (certainly to them). What would it take for the world to finally, deeply comprehend that there are no ‘universal laws’? That just because something exists now, doesn’t mean it will always exist. That just because we believe something to be true, doesn’t make it true. There are multiple truths, realities, existences, and universes existing in tandem with each other, and this is natural, (dare we say, ‘right’?) and desirable.

The next time a child happily shares a fact, law, reality or observation that you haven’t learned is ‘right’, why not hold off from ‘correcting’ her? Why not discuss and explore this magic, brave, new parallel reality? Why hasten that fragile mind in that tiny body into harness any faster than necessary?

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there”.
— Rumi