THE KINGDOMS

When I occasionally recall a boy saying, years ago, as he stared at an ant colony display, “There’s a whole kingdom here!”, it always reminds me that there are kingdoms everywhere. Truly, this universe is a place of kingdoms – of realms and regions more fanciful than those in fairytales. Today I happen to be surrounded by the kingdom of snowflakes, and tonight, perhaps, it will be the kingdom of stars and a sliver of moon. There are even kingdoms inside the toast and coffee I had for breakfast this morning – intricate kingdoms ruled by tiny but mighty molecules. Today, when my wife and I talk together, we will enter the empire of ideas, perhaps the grandest of all kingdoms. We will travel from thought to thought like searchers among the stars and planets, scouts in the far-flung territories of the mind. We’ll seem to be sitting on the couch having a simple conversation, but we’ll actually be far off – and happily so – in the vast and sovereign state of ideas.