An eagle is told that it once lived in huge nests on high mountains and tall trees at high altitudes and the big bird scoffs at such a preposterous idea. How can such a big bird living in caves and hunting on rodents soar in the skies over mountain tops and oceans. Not a bad idea but quite unlikely. Seems like these humans are crazy and think of anything about other animals to hide their own embarrassment over their monkey ancestry.
Pick up any great novel, Hundred Years of Solitude, Blindness, Beloved, Alchemist or any others that you have read where imagination is stretched but you flow with the narrative. You easily believe what the writer is asking of you. It seems plausible and hence possible and you like a bird open your wings and fly where the winds of possibilities take you. Marquez creates a parallel world of freedom and we camp in this world with him; Morrison brings a spirit from the dead and we unblinkingly accept her character; Saramago presents a sightless world to us and parades the humanity stripped of its humanness and we willingly embrace it, we believe it all. Why? Why do these writers write these fantastical novels and why do we have a tendency to believe it all?
Possibilities that we cannot fathom nor explain are now left only in the domain of arts. Even in our own lives we have seen to a certain degree stripping our lives of the extraordinary. Whereas we listened to stories of Djinns and witches and fairies and inexplainable things are now not repeated to young kids. They grow up on stories which we can explain or more importantly which science can explain for us.
I sometimes wonder whether by refusing to accept the extraordinary we are drawing a curtain between ourselves and a world of possibilities.
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