There Is No Spoon

To my knowledge I have never bent a spoon, or any flatware for that matter, with naught but the power of my mind. Also, if we are truly trapped in a very complete, never crashing, entirely virus-proof computer program, I can't see the matrix. (If at this point you still don't get my reference, stop reading now and go directly to your video store to rent The Matrix and only The Matrix. You may be tempted by sequels but resist.)

Though I have no psychic abilities and cannot see the world around me for the facade that it surely is, I do have my perceptions and, ultimately, isn't that what it's all about?

I remember being five or so and hearing some people debating where wind came from. At the time I thought that was the strangest debate I'd ever heard because to me it was obvious from whence the wind came; it was windy when the trees waved. If there was a light wind the small branches would flick around stirring up just the slightest bit of air. In a hard, blow the shingles off your roof gust, the trees practically bent over double. It made perfect since. When I was hot I could flap a piece of paper and stir up a breeze and the trees could just do that on a far grander scale.

I can't overstate here how certain I was about my theory. I'd seen this with my own eyes, every time there was wind there was some motion in a tree. I'd done my own experiments with paper. I doubt I knew what a scientific journal was at the time, but had I known, I would have been ready to publish.

So, what does this mean for me now? Other than a potential picture book (copy-write pending, don't get any ideas) I think it proves that seeing shouldn't always be believing. Maybe the things that I'm dead certain about are things that, seen from a slightly different perspective, might not be as clear. Maybe what I think of as empirical evidence is only a small piece of a much larger puzzle. Maybe, even though I can see, touch and eat my cereal with it, there really is no spoon.