Yourself?

It feels like walking across a snowy field and being the first to make footprints

What did people see when they first opened their eyes? Did they see a world full of treasures, or did they see a world full of fears? Did they see a world like God's Eden, or did they see a realm of hulking elephants, hippotamuses and tigers? With scraggly bones of long deceased animals littering the plains? Did they see in the forest, a bright warm home, or a dark, fetid, claustrophobic hell?

What does it mean to do research? I keep going back to definitions, because definitions are our springboard to the unknown. It tells us what we already know. By exclusion then, it tells us what we do not know. And helps us find our way.

My answer to that first human who opened his eyes. It depends. If he first saw a cat eating a mouse, and he could kill that cat. Then, it very much would be Eden to him. But if the first thing he saw, was a tiger fighting with an elephant, with snarling, roaring, trumpeting and the Earth shaking, he would then conclude that this was hell.

My point is. Perhaps research is about this whole idea of us. Where do we stand? To bacteria, insects, maybe we are the most hellish environment imaginable. We have huge defences, big size. To viruses, maybe we are nothing more than walking food silos and factories. To animals, perhaps we are food.

Everyone lives life based on their prior experience. When I chose my future, what was I thinking? I'm a naturally suspicious person. To me, it was consciously walking into hell.

Because all fruitful research is done that way. See a snowy field and be the first to make footprints.

posted by Downhere. @ 1:43 pm