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Mouse Explains How the Universe Was Made

On a plane bound for Cincinnati, I am sitting next to a round-faced little girl in pink. Her mother calls her “Mouse” and isn’t interested in talking to her, but she’s full of curiosity about everything from the ventilation system to the creation of the world, so she plies me with questions and stories for the whole flight.

She gazes out the window as we skim the cloudbanks. “It looks like we’re flying on glass.”

She asks, “Have you ever landed from the sky in water?”

“Not in this body.”

“But can people do that?”

“Oh, sure. There’s a kind of plane called a flying boat, or a seaplane, that lands on pontoons that keep it afloat. And then there are rocket ships that splash down and are fished out.”

“Have you ever touched the sun?”

“Not with my hand.”

“Sometimes I feel the sun is following me, real close.”

She thinks for a bit, then comes out with, “How was the world invented?”

“Some people say God made the world. Others say it began with a Big Bang and the star-stuff has been expanding ever since.”

“I know a boy who says the world was made by God blowing sand.”

I falter a bit, as she quizzes me further on cosmogony and on how “Cheeses” (it takes me a moment to realize she is saying “Jesus”) was born. Then she looks up at the air vent and asks me to show her how it works. I demonstrate turning it counter-clockwise to let the air out, clockwise to shut it off.

“Maybe that’s how the universe was made,” the girl in pink says brightly. “Someone turned everything counter-clockwise.”

She laughs. Her mother looks sullen; Mouse isn’t supposed to laugh.

The conversation with Mouse reminded me of something quite fundamental about imagination. Children are princes and princesses of the imagination, until the adult world crushes their curiosity and their sense of wonder. Kids know the magic of making things up.

Have you ever asked, “How can I become more creative?” or “How can I turn on my imagination?”

It’s easy. Tune in to your inner child, the one capable of imagining that the world was made when God blew sand, or gave everything a twist to the left. You may have left that wonder-child behind when you tried so very hard to grow up and fit in with the driving expectations of the grown up world. Listening to young children like Mouse will help you to reconnect with the little prince or princess of imagination inside you. Mouse’s mom will learn so much if she stops telling her daughter to play mouse.