The brevity of life

Tiarnan, five, dwells on topics which rarely concern little boys of his age. He is in the habit of wrestling with the deeper issues of life, and the world around him. It seems clear that he is trying to understand the nature of life and the context in which it is lived.

Yesterday, he commented to me:

"I wish that people never died, in real life."

He looked somewhat pained as he said this, squinting his features as if peering into the future we all must face, one day: Death.

He discussed his thoughts further on the matter, but his words were a little too quick and light for me to catch, in his high voice. However, at the end, I heard his final observation, as he looked up at me again.

"Humans are just too easy to break."

He didn't seemed pleased at this poor design work. With a slightly heavy air, he then wandered off, perhaps in search of his brothers, for some lighter fare.

This little snippet of conversation leads me to reflect again on the weightiness that preoccupies the thoughts of my youngest son. He is quite the little philosopher. I am led to wonder how he will be when he grows up, if this is how he is, at the beginning. I would be unsurprised to find him becoming a ruminative writer, who contemplates matters of some depth, with great care. After all, he is already doing as much, in his daily conversation, as a five year old.

I have no answer to life and death, Tiarnan. Yet, there is hope for children as young as you are, that science might learn to forestall death, to a great extent, in the course of your lifetime.

Perhaps, for little Tiarnan, Death could be much further away than it was for his parents' generation. I hope so, anyway. I would love for my children to endure for a very long time, indeed.

Posted by Valentine Cawley


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I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

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Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

What boys really like.

A couple of days ago, Syahidah asked Tiarnan, five: “Do all boys like guns?”

Fintan, eight, who was nearby, interjected immediately: “No. Some boys like girls!”

Syahidah had to laugh. Fintan’s observation was born out of the age of innocence, that precedes puberty – yet still he could not help noticing the obsession some boys have, with girls. I wonder whether he has ever wondered why?

One day, not too far away, he will know the answer for himself, I feel.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The End of the Universe.

Yesterday, Tiarnan, five, asked an unsettling question of his mother.

"What happens after the end of the Universe?", he enquired, with a somewhat serious voice. It clearly bothered him.

Now, his mother, Syahidah is an artist, not a cosmologist, so she didn't really have any ready or satisfying answers. However, his question surprised her for another reason altogether: for she, too, had asked the very same question, as a child of much the same age as Tiarnan. It was almost as if the query was embedded in her DNA and passed on to him, marked "Unanswered concern", for the next generation to solve.

The big question here is why does a five year old ask such a question? We have no TV in the house, only DVDs. He has not been exposed to any programmes on cosmology or astronomy. This question emerges from his own thought, therefore. He has clearly looked at the world and come to the conclusion that, one day, it would end. Then, having so concluded that even the Universe must die one day, he asked the next question: what would follow the death of the Universe?

These seem rather deep and troubling questions for a mere five year old to be asking. At times, it seems that the littlest people have the biggest thoughts, because they trouble themselves to ask the questions, that adults have long ago stopped thinking about. Perhaps it is because children are inexperienced enough to think that, by asking such questions, they might readily find answers, whereas adults develop an instinct for identifying questions that are, to them, unanswerable and so don't even ask them in the first place. All in all, it makes young children, sometimes, more interesting company, than adults - for they have tendency to ask questions that adults would not. Sometimes, even more interestingly, they answer them.

I shall have a chat with Tiarnan about the Universe and try to give him some understanding of the scale of it, the age of it and how much time there is yet to come. I have a feeling though that even these vast spans of time, will not reassure him about his essential point: the Universe, like all that lives, is mortal.

It seems that Tiarnan is not just concerned with death, but with the biggest Death of all - the end of everything. What a big concern, for so little a boy. I am led to wonder if he is going to make a lifelong habit of such questions. I wonder, further, whether he will make a career of answering them.