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Atoms

I remember the first time I got taught what an atom was. I was around eleven or thirteen years old and I was as keen as anything to learn. My science teacher held up a pen and asked people what it was made of, reduced the things down and down with a simple: yes but what's THAT made of? Until she described what an atom was; how everything we experience is made up of these tiny things called atoms. It blew my mind.

I think there is something charmingly poignant about how much that one little fact opened my eyes; suddenly I was even more interested in everything. As the years progressed I learnt about neutrons and electrons and then the Higgs Boson came along and despite not knowing that much about it all I am so interested in it. I love finding out about the world (one of the reasons why I love studying philosophy so much), I love that you can look up at the sky and know so much about it but know nothing at all - it makes you feel so small but so big at the same time.

Reading philosophy, for me, is reading a load of words about people's eye-opening moments. We are curious enough about our world and beyond that we feel it's important to communicate and, probably more importantly, record our knowledge. I felt like I wanted to tell everyone about atoms because they idea that everything is made up of them baffled me. Imagine my reaction when I learnt about protons, neutrons and even blindly stumbled through a quantum physics lesson.

My love and desire for learning has grown and grown and even though I don't understand a lot if it, I still have this massive need to communicate it. We like telling other people what we know so we can open their eyes a little bit and maybe even learn from them too. Obviously, where faith is concerned it can get a bit wishy washy but I do firmly believe that to be entirely faithful to one faith you have to explore what other people think so you can affirm your own beliefs.

To explore and discover the world is a wonderful thing and I think that it's really important - and a really important part of our species to want to do that. I think it's one of the reasons why I love our species so much, human beings love to explore and discover and then write it down and push their opinions on people and fight about them; it makes our heads a bit clearer and things make more sense if we argue our own beliefs because it proves to us that we do really believe in them, even if it's a twelve year old girl telling everyone about the awesome things that are atoms.

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