The Ramblings of a Confused Fish

Baby's First Existential Crisis

As long as I can remember, I've had phases where I've gotten obsessed with different mythologies and folk tales.

I can think of Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Norse, Hindu, and Celtic off the top of my head.

Some of these stories are insane. Zeus had his tendons ripped out and reattached, a god stepped on a king's head and sent him to the netherworld, and a goddess's brother threw a flayed horse into her house, causing a few servants to die from shock. (If you know all these references, you're just like me. Join the cult.)

Some gods are given flaws, and some are given none at all. It's the epitome of confusion. Nobody can agree if there's one god or many, flawless or human, not even if they look like humans.

My first time being confronted with this particular conflict was in kindergarten. In my religion, we believe in many gods that are various forms of one god. And I met someone who believed there was only one god, without variation. No, the world didn't end.

After getting over the shock of other people having different beliefs than me, I formulated a response. She fired back at me, and I answered her again. We were both stubborn and refused to admit defeat. It was one of the most enlightening conversations I've ever had in my life. Don't laugh. We went back and forth until one of the teachers caught on to our arguing and tried to diffuse the situation with, "Everybody believes different things, so let people believe what they want to." Both I and the other girl looked at each other and promptly went back to our debate.

We argued for the next 15 minutes, much to our teacher's dismay.

When I got home, my parents weren't home, so I went to my grandma.

I asked her, "There are a bunch of gods, right? Not just one? A girl in my class said there was only one god."

She looked at me and froze, probably because she didn't expect a five-year-old to start asking her about religion. She nodded, cutting some carrots for whatever she was making for dinner that night.

She told me, "She probably learned that there was only one god from her parents. Different religions believe different things about the gods."

"But which was right?" I whined. I needed a concrete answer as much as I wanted to be right.

"Both," She told me. "Every culture has a different idea of what we call the gods," I remember thinking, My brain is going to explode. How are there so many variations and possibilities to explain the world?

I was beside myself, how could someone believe something other than what I had learned? I had never thought that maybe that girl was taught something different than I was. I never considered anything other than what was told to me. I was spiraling.

To this day, I think about that interaction a lot. Mostly because right after having an existential crisis, I had apple slices with peanut butter while watching Blues Clues.