Before we called it science, we called it myth.
We named the stars before we mapped them,
traced gods into constellations before we traced their coordinates.
We told stories not because we were ignorant—but because we were curious.
Wonder was the first element.
Awe, the first force.
We studied patterns in the sky
with our eyes alone,
and called it prophecy.
We watched the tides rise and fall,
and knew the moon pulled strings above our heads
like a silver puppeteer.
We didn’t yet have words for gravity or orbits—
but we watched.
We learned.
And when the wind howled through the trees
and the crops failed under strange moons,
we gave it a name.
We gave it meaning.
We remembered it through song,
through story,
through the firelight whispers that became legacy.
Before the microscopes and telescopes came the bonfire.
From the bonfire came stories and myths.
The tales passed from mouth to heart by storytellers,
From heart to song by wandering bards.
From song to stanzas by poets.
From stanzas into written word by scholars and writers.
From the writer’s hands to the masses.
The masses individualized and became students of the nature,
the stars and the people around them.
Before peer review came priestesses and poets.
Before experiments came experience.
Before the lab—there was the lore.
The lore spoke of the movement of time,
of water, of earth, of planets;
The sun,
The moon,
The stars.
It spoke of the fluid movement
of one part of the natural rhythms
of the earth into the next.
It spoke of connection,
of energy, of symbiosis.
The lore became mythology.
We worshiped the works of the Gods and Goddess—
The mundanity of life;
Birth and death, harvests and growth
The unexplained phenomena:
Storms and floods. earthquakes and fires
We praised the beauty of the blossoms.
Quaked in fear of the howling winds.
Rejoiced in the ebb and flow of the water.
Worried if that summer’s crops would be enough for winter.
When did we become so arrogant as a species?
Have we stopped seeing the mystical and the magic of day-to-day life?
When did we become so jaded
that we no longer sought the mysteries or fed our curiosity?
When did we stop being creatures;
following the flow of the seasons;
embracing the changes they brought?
When did we stop seeing all of this—ourselves and each other?
When did we lose our wonder?
When did we forget to listen?
We have always tried to name the unknown.
To hold wonder in our hands,
and shape it into something we could pass on.
Even now, we are still telling stories—only now we call them theories.
We are still listening to the stars,
only now we have machines to echo their music.
But it began with awe.
And awe is where it returns.
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