I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

Once, when my now 17-year-old was only three or four years old, she asked me a pointed question.

We were driving by the post office in our town, and she asked, what is the world for? What a question. I'm sure I laughed out of surprise. Can't a mom run some errands without being confronted with deep, unanswerable questions? I think I told her it's for all of this and gestured around us.

Knowing me, I said something about appreciating nature and loving each other and having lots

of experiences while we are alive.

It wasn't my best work.

I didn't have a great answer for my daughter back then,

but when I first read today's poem, there it was.

There is one phrase toward the end of this poem that I keep coming back to.

The earth is a school.

The more I hear it, the more I agree.

The earth is a school.

The world is for learning and becoming, and we humans, we students, have so very much to learn. Common denominators by Cynthia Arou King

You float up towards the ceiling. by Cynthia Arou King.

You float up towards the ceiling.

You're a ball of light.

You're in pitch blackness of space floating.

You find that you don't feel pain because you're without your body.

Suddenly, you're suspended in a dark expanse, like outer space.

Suddenly, down the hall, hearing the doctor speak about you dying.

And the light you go towards is blinding, like a thousand suns, a million sons, the brightest things

you can imagine, but exponentially brighter than that. You find yourself in a terrain.

...