a soft smile and then a long sigh. “Why do we do that? Why do we systematically eradicate what makes us most unique?”
“Oh, well, that’s easy. Tribal proximity,” Yoli said.
“Tribal what-now?”
“They talked about it this weekend. We are social animals. We need each other to survive. Alone, we’re pretty helpless. In fact, did you know that one way scientists have found to know if a people was civilized or not is the presence of healed leg bones?”
“Yow. That’s a little rough.”
“Yeah, but it makes sense. In an uncivilized culture, if someone broke a leg, they were just left on their own and they did not survive, so the leg bone never healed. A civilized culture meant that others in the culture would take the person in, care for him or her, bind up the leg, let it heal, feed the person, care for the person until the leg was better. That’s why it’s so incredibly important for us to be a part of the tribe,” Yoli said. “So tribal proximity or how close or far away from the tribe we are makes a difference. If you became an outcast, you were literally sent away from the tribe to try to fend for yourself. Not only is that scary, it very often puts your survival at stake. So we learned not to upset the tribe.”
“Peer pressure.”
“Exactly.”
“And family pressure.”
“And societal pressure,” Yoli said. “The box, we learn, is safe. Getting out of the box, not so safe. We don’t want to be an outcast, so we squelch or hide what is most unique about us. Unique equals dangerous.”
“Because we might get thrown out of the tribe,” Taylor said. “So, like your dreams. You didn’t want to tell anybody.”
“Because I might get thrown out of my tribe. And my tribe was already very, very small.”
“But we need that,” Taylor said. “As a society, we need the creative, innovative, imaginative people. We need that. But if they are being systemically threatened with being an outcast by using their uniqueness…” Her mind flashed with a mask covering colors. “How… how do we combat that? How do we get people to stop covering up their uniqueness? How do we encourage people to not cover up who they are, to come out, to share their dreams? What if we’re all doing that?”
“I think we might be,” Yoli said.
“Well, that stinks. We need to find a way to help people not do that.”
“Is that possible?”
Taylor squinted into the question. “Ever heard of Roger Bannister and the four-minute mile?”
“Uhhh?”
“Professor Peters was talking about it the other day. See, back in the day, everybody thought a four-minute mile was impossible. That was until this guy named Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile. Lots of people had tried. In fact, so many had tried that the coaches thought they had it all figured out. They thought it would only be broken on a day that was about 68 degrees, perfectly dry and still, and in front of a crowd of thousands and thousands. Bannister wasn’t trained in the conventional wisdom of the day though. He went against a lot of what people thought you had to do in order to even think about breaking the four-minute mile. And the day he broke it, it was wet, cold, and in front of a crowd of barely a thousand. But once he broke it, other people then did too. Just a year later, three people broke it in the same race,” Taylor said. “So, I think we have to ask ourselves, ‘What are we calling impossible like the four-minute mile and talking ourselves out of doing? What do we need to do to help people think outside of the box, in deep theta, lateral, quantum, alpha so they stop believing only what’s impossible and start wondering what might be possible and helping them access that?’ That’s what we need to figure out.”
Taylor slept restlessly Saturday night. Excitement mixed with ideas created far too much to think about to have any room for sleep.
The next morning she awoke early, made herself a piece of toast and some tea, wrote Lily a quick note, and headed to church. She started her search for the Everetts in the parking lot and continued it into the church. However, with only a few minutes left before the service started, she gave up and went on in. Finding a pew, she inched in. It was strange being at church alone, and she wished that the Everetts would show up.
When