I've always been curious.  If my parents weren't dead, they could confirm this.  My endless questions were the bane of their existence, some days and some nights.  "You don't have to know everything," they would say.  "At the very least, you don't need to know everything right now." 

As is often the case with parents, they were right.  But I never wanted to know everything.  For example, I want to know how the tilt and rotations of the earth and moon around the sun and the earth respectively influence tides, seasons, and hours of daylight.  But I know that a 3-D model would show me all I want to know. I don't care about where earth is in the order of planets outward from the sun.   Proof.  I've never wanted to know everything.

But, I am a curious soul.  And there are many things I've wondered about since I can remember wondering -- more than 40 years now. 

I wonder why it often seems that everyone else in the world is having a better time than I am.  Okay. Maybe not in the whole world.  The starving children in India or Africa (locations of choice among Canadian mothers in the 1950s) weren't having a better time than me.  But everyone I knew was having a better time than me.  Or it seemed that way.  And it often still does.  I have an interesting life.  I have been told that others would trade their souls for my life.   But deep-down inside, it still seems to me that they and everyone else is having a better time than I am.

That better time might consist of sleeping in, for example.   Fun when someone else does it.  When I do it, I'm immediately struck by how much more fun others who didn't fritter the day away sleeping were having than I would have, because I'd overslept.  You get the picture.  A smart woman, and I still wonder why it seems that way to me.

I also wonder why others  -- especially men, in my experience -- can fall asleep anywhere, anytime, with anyone around them. On subways.   On trains.  In strangers' living rooms.  No blanket or throw over them.   No-one with them.  And they sleep.  Like babies.  Why is it that they can be so un-self-conscious, so secure, that they can just sleep like that?   Even in my own bed, I'm usually fetal.  In my own house, I have to cover myself with something before I can nap.  Why is it that others don't need those security "blankets" and positions?

I wonder how children learn all they do in 18 years.  When they're born, they don't even know how to keep their heads up.  Eighteen years later, they can live on their own, and vote, and maybe even have their own children.  How do they learn so much so fast?  Where do they get all that knowledge from?  How come they have the energy to be learning and to make stupid mistakes and act like jerks, all in the same day or year?  And why, and when, do they stop learning? I wonder why people who aren't children often don't learn, and don't change.  And I wonder why I can't be one of those people who is not driven to learn.  Always.  Even in middle age.  When there is no energy.

And, of course, I wonder why I wonder so much.  I used to think it was a by-product of an over-active intellect.  But it's not like I wonder about the profound things in life.  I don't wonder about reincarnation or heaven or hell.  I don't wonder about what happens when people die.  I don't wonder about how to save the world.  (Well, I used to wonder about that, but now I know, and it doesn't help, so I don't wonder about that one anymore.) 

My point?  If I wonder because I'm so smart, then why don't I wonder about important things? And why don't I reach conclusions about the unimportant things that I keep wondering about, year after year, decade after decade.  I wonder if I'd wonder about the same things in another life if there were reincarnation.  Or if I already am wondering about them for the second or more lifetime. 

And, finally, of course, I wonder, "Who wrote the book of love?"

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