THE VOICE
On an otherwise ordinary (cold) November afternoon, in an otherwise ordinary room, with an otherwise ordinary fire crackling in an otherwise ordinary fireplace, a Voice spoke to me. It wasn't a person's voice, because it spoke inside my head. And it wasn't my voice. I was sure of that. This voice whispered of timeless mysteries and secret promises, opening a door into an invisible world that would one day prove to be filled with priceless wisdom.
The fact I'd recently entered kindergarten seemed to matter not to the Voice. Apparently age isn't an issue when mystery and adventure call. In that cozy room, before the Voice spoke, I huffed on the windowpane and drew in the condensation with my stubby fingers, lost in artistic reverie. The fire, built earlier by my father, slowly withered to a tiny, golden glow. A chill took the air.
Shivering, I glanced outside. The wind blew in great gusts. Treetops in the distance swayed to an invisible Tchaikovsky. Flocks of red and gold leaves, now disentangled from their branches, twirled merrily against a dark, cloudy sky.
I glanced at the fireplace. A handful of iridescent embers radiated their last gift of heat from the blackened depths of the firebox. Somewhere in my five-year-old mind, a keen observation had taken place. I realized how protected I was from nature's howling fury outside. Yet my protection was short-lived. The fire would soon disappear. I longed for its return the way a sea captain's wife longs for sight of her husband's ship.
Unbidden, my secret wish for the fire's resurrection kindled a fertile spark in my imagination. My mind instantly ignited into a flash of brilliant insight. A detailed scene I'd witnessed earlier replayed itself. In it, my father knelt by the brick hearth preparing the fire. He crumpled newspaper into the fireplace, added sticks and larger pieces of wood, then poured a small amount of clear liquid from a paper cup onto his pile, lit a match and tossed it on. Whoosh! Flames licked up immediately.
Aha! I knew where to get clear liquid, lots of it. I dashed to the kitchen, grabbed the biggest glass I could find, filled it to the brim with water and hurried back to the fire to reignite it. The mind of an inspired kindergartner is seldom prepared for the practical properties of thermodynamics. As my water hit the coals, a cloud of smoke and ash roiled through the fireplace, swirling and tumbling in an ominous gray vortex. The tiny mound of glowing coals hissed a last dying breath. Soggy ashes seeped out onto the hearth.
Stunned, I stood motionless. The water might as well have been thrown into my face. My bright quest for renewed warmth lay motionless and dead, sprawled against the sturdy laws of Newton's physics. Into that suspended moment of innocent tragedy a new possibility emerged, a mystery from another world, another purpose. The moment stretched and expanded, hovering on the edge of eternity, as the room stilled into prescient silence.
The Voice spoke then, in a clear tone, reverberating through emptiness like liquid light. Its message sank deep into my bones, to the very marrow of my being, resting there like an acorn whose mighty oak is hidden inside, waiting. "Things are not what they appear to be," said the Voice, distinct and vibrant. In it's tone I could hear the hint of hidden opportunities, when a child's afternoon of play suddenly becomes a lesson, a riddle, a point of light. The mighty oak, unformed inside its acorn, the succulent fruit, merely a possibility inside its seed, offer secret elixirs from a future yet beckoning.
Had that Voice been the only time mysteries from the unknown anointed me, this story would already be over. But the Voice was merely the beginning, the germination of a shimmering path that later beckoned and guided me, deeper and deeper, into a timeless vault of hidden secrets that would one day, through the most unlikely source, reveal themselves.
We are not what we appear to be, the Voice seemed to say. Our journey of discovery, fertilizing possibilities more numerous than we might imagine, lies before us. With brain science heralding the immeasurable creativity of human awareness inherent in neuroplasticity, and quantum physics revealing a reality with multiple hidden dimensions, we can finally approach who we are and who we might become with a degree of clarity available, previously, only to a few.
