I Am This Because I Am Not That

I went to the farmer's market and noticed three little children amidst the browsing large adults.  Juxtaposition of the tall and short people, old and young created a visual dynamic.  Contrasted sizes and abilities between the babies and adults described each to the other.

The children are charming to us because they are not adults.  We know adultness because babies are babies.  They can't be anything else.

A dog is a dog.  Perhaps when we watch the dog, we learn more about ourselves, we define humanness because there are dogs.  They can only be dogs.

Snow is snow.  Perhaps when we take time to feel snow and not impose our human qualities on it, simply letting it be snow and learning how snow is not human, we learn more about being human.  The whole entire physical natural world teaches us things about our own nature because it is not human.

We walk on two feet.  When we watch another creature who walks on four or six or eight feet, we define our humanness.  If the world were comprised of only human beings, we would much the worse for it.  We would not know that Usain Bolt is fast as a gazelle or that a baby is as soft as a rabbit.  We define things that are because of the things they aren't.  Black is not white, but both look more beautiful because of the other.  The difference between them helps to define both of them.

The babies and children I saw today were cute and funny and small because they were not adults, not dogs, not pumpkins or any other of the things in the world around them.  The difference was wonderful.