"If there was no room for doubt, there would be no room for me"

When I was younger one of my first poems was called, "The Why Stage" where I mused on the time in children's lives that is filled with wonder. The age where, everything is a question and all things hold the possibility of fantasy and amazing surprises. Santa Clause is real, and the reason that you see the moon following the car home late at night is because the man in the moon is watching you. I remember when writing it, already feeling disillusioned at my own cynicism. Of course, being a teen and full of angst this is normal, right?
Interestingly enough, I think that it is the "why stage" that is both annoying and developmentally crucial for all of us. Anyone who is awake enough to ask questions has to go through this more than once. How many times have movies made you hope for the impossible, even as adults? Or what about just moving through the tangible world, and secretly hoping for the intangible to pop out at you? I mean, of course there will never be a dinosaur in the park, or a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end of it. We all know why there are shooting stars and it is not because of a king's necklace knocking one out of the sky. There are no fire swamps with rodents of unusual size, and if there are screaming eels- they are not throwing themselves at the ground to miss so that they can fly. The good guy does not always win, and usually the truth is not nearly as beautiful as it could be in our minds.
Or is it?
There is something about this great diverse mess of humanity that still amazes and boggles my mind. It is the hope and tenacity of the human spirit. Even though we know real, we hope for beauty. When surrounded with walls, we hope for flowers to come out of the cracks. We seek for stories that remind us of love, of light, of courage or passion, of the incredible. And sometimes, we find them.
Walking down a sidewalk, or up a steep mountain pass with my eyes on my feet I doubt. I doubt that there is anything to be amazed by, anything miraculous, anything except the cold hard rock and my feet going forward. I get so caught up in my own progress that I forget to look, forget to ask why. But, if we do not doubt, where is there room in our hearts to be proven wrong by the unbelievable?
Some days, you can be going along with the destination all mapped out, and there, right in front of you- is a piece of your imagination. Most days, it is just a dirt path, but knowing that you can be surprised, and wanting to be, is the thing that makes me know that doubt is not a thing to be despised, but a tool that sifts away the loose stuff and reveals rocks of hope.