I wonder

Quite a many things, some silly, some arbitrary, some completely insane, some heedful, but there's something common amongst them, like the thread of a necklace binding its beads, which makes me wonder about what all I wonder.

I wonder about realities such as these, which baffle me everytime :

How this world will survive when all the petrol is used up.
What is it like to work miles below the earth, inside a mine.
Why is earth looked upon with its north pole at the top, and not upside down.
How does a television work - (though a black mark on my education - television is still one of the most astounding things for me till date ).
What are the physiological differences between the brains of a wise, intelligent and genius person vis-a-vis a dumb, unwise and stupid person.
If there is a limit to the ever decreasing record timings of 100m sprint race in Olympics.

And the most baffling one - If almost all of the engineers like me end up doing software jobs which doesn't help the world in any way, then who's driving the technology train( because the rest of us land up in one or the other management institutes).
Who makes all those beautifully designed iPods, Macs and Tele shopping stuff with increasing complexities.
Who after all is the real engineer, actually putting his brain to calculate forces in trusses and potential differences across the nodes.?

And then there are such philosophical wonders as -

What would it be like to see yourself from another persons' eye, i.e. to say how does another person sees you physically, definitely its not like seeing your own self in the mirror.
Where does that 'I' ( 'I' as in the one which Descartes talks of in his meditation) ,unleash itself after the death of the body.
Does everyone percieve pink color in a similar manner.
How different it would be living in a parallel universe.
What is it like to be a rattle snake, or a tiger or for that matter any animal.
And what it feels like being in love.[;)]. ( I dont know if its good or bad but love is still philosophical to me ..!)
...and the inexhaustible list however continues endlessly.

A bit of past on this -
My confrontation with the feeling of wonderment started off from the most hackneyed poem of our kindergarten times - "Twinkle Twinkle little star, How I wonder what you are".
And I still wonder to this day looking at the sky with the same innocence of a child for whom the stars are no less than the diamonds...only that the meaning of 'Twinkle' has changed with time ;). (No, am no fan of anybody by the name of Twinkle.)

Alice in Wonderland, Topsy Turvy Land,The Far-away Tree etc etc, all contributed in my essential learning of the act of wondering about things. Most of us do wonder about things, but take it as if it was yet another dream after a heavy day only to be forgotten the next morning when our eyes reopen. We re-indulge ourselves back in things around us and continue normally unless something again makes us fall into that trance and we start wondering about something else. But this dilutes the gravity and uniqueness of what one wonders.

Coz' one of the very basic attributes of all what we wonder is our assumption of it being unique within the scope of what we know. Its not always that one wonders something completely new, or else we would be witnessing the deluge of startling, strange ideas every other day. But people wonder and then let that contemplation go off like a puff of smoke, like a slippery fish escaping out of their hands back into the water, never to be caught again, thereby preventing that deluge.

Wondering about things worthy of being wondered like the seven wonders of the ancient world or sudden transformation in our lives along with the causes for those transformations, do not qualify according to me as the proper subjects for wondering. The ones which qualify are both physical and metaphysical, they are subtle yet understandable, they are conspicous yet obscured like the ones which I had already mentioned. And the thread which I reffered to in the very first line, which binds all of them, is that unindebted sense of freedom and glee that comes along anytime and everytime you wonder about something.

so long..

--and yes keep wondering what this post was all about !--