A New Series: Thought-Provoking Questions

Oh StumbleUpon...how you provide hours of entertainment! On this one occasion, StumbleUpon took me to a site entitled "25 Beautifully Illustrated Thought-Provoking Questions." It's quite an interesting and thought-provoking (*gasp!*) site, fully of amazingly simple questions that could lead you down a very inspiring thought path. For the next few weeks, I'm going to try to answer one of these questions every day (except for the days I'm going to be in Germany, so I'll be taking a week off).

Today's question:

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?

This, I think, is a very interesting question because we are always told from a young age to "act your age." We've grown up with these thoughts and ideas of what someone our age is supposed to behave like, but what if we didn't know this sort of thing? What if behaving "normally" is actually abnormal, as in not the way we're intended to behave by nature. If we go down that path, we have medical and technological advances to thank for our extended years. Not too long ago, a woman at my age (twenty-two) would have been married with at least two children by now, raising the children and teaching any daughters how to become home makers themselves. Years before that, I would be living my golden years, as the life expectancy wasn't much beyond age 30. I mean, if you're battling triceratops and mammoths every day for food, water, and shelter, your life expectancy wouldn't be too long, either (and yes, I know I'm over-exaggerating a little right now and Jessi's probably having a brain aneurism, but it's sort of a figure of speech). But nowadays, a woman doesn't usually get engaged until she's about 24 or 25, married sometime between 25 and 30, and may not pop her first kid out til she's 36. A couple hundred years ago you'd be old if you were 36.

I guess all in all, the question is really quite difficult to answer. Would you behave like a child if there were no social restrictions on age, or would you simply mature at a natural rate? It's hard to figure that out on my own without a much more extensive knowledge of child and adult psychology, sociology, and a bunch of other courses I didn't really pay any attention to in school.

I suppose I'll go ahead and treat you to another Q&A, since I'm a little bored in the middle of the night and WIDE AWAKE.

Question 2
If you had the opportunity to get a message across to a large group of people, what would your message be?

For me, that question has always been pretty easy. My message would be simple in delivery, but difficult in following through with. My message is this: "We are all human. We should just accept each other for our minor differences."

Could you imagine how different the world would be if everyone just got along, or even better, cared for each other? We'd have no more wars against other countries, we wouldn't battle with our peers regarding race or sexuality, we wouldn't have a constant need to piss off our annoying neighbors, we wouldn't have hunger or distrust or poverty. We'd all be equal. So many of our problems would be solved if everyone just got along.

But I know that won't happen. We'd be creating an impossible Utopia. We have conflict. We have distrust. We have discontent. We have ignorance. We have the constant need to add more and more Christmas lights simply to irritate the neighbors with the sticks up their butts. That's just how humans are.