Check out Aaron Jasinski’s A Prayer to Memory:

Doesn’t this capture a bit of the wonder of childhood? When the world felt wide and mysterious and indeterminate. I want to more consciously rekindle the wonder that makes our youth so remarkable, and this piece has that effect on me.

(Of course, the nature of reality remains mysterious and indeterminate even as we grow and our confidence in our scientific knowledge grows. Scientific advancements cannot answer the essential nature of reality—into the reason for nature.)

The piece also reminds me of something from C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy novels, of a passage from Chapter 13 in the final book in the series, “That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-ups:”

“Have you ever noticed,” said Dimble, “that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?” …

“If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family—anything you like—at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder…”

“Everything is getting more itself and more different from everything else all the time…”

This piece captures what I imagine was that point that lingers someplace in our memories when everything was a bit softer. When there was more elbow room. When the contrasts weren’t quite so sharp. When everything was a little less itself yet when the incredible felt closer to reality.