My son has the dubious distinction of being, well, my son. I say that because unlike a lot of other 8-year-olds he receives the occasional earful of spiritual woo-woo from his old man. Fortunately, my son is a good sport about it all and, in my defense, he actually brings up the stuff as much as I do.

The other day he asked me why I was in a bad mood and after the predictable “I don’t know,” I thought about it some more and said, “Because I’m choosing to be. Sorry.” This naturally puzzled him and he asked what I meant. Thus began a brief discussion about the power – or impotence – of our thoughts; that only when we choose to identify with a thought do we, in essence, become that thought. (Yes, we talk like this quite a lot. I told you being my child is no picnic.)

I explained to him how we choose which thoughts to identify with and that if I select a negative thought, well, I’ll end up being negative that day, and vice versa. As is typical of the boy, he lapsed into a quiet contemplation and we didn’t speak any more on the subject.

A couple of days later a similar conversation arose, this time about our bodies. Though I forget the context, at some point I said, “Your body doesn’t really need ‘you’ to take care of it.” To which he asked, “What do you mean?” So I explained that since his birth his body has more or less managed itself quite well, the heart beating, the lungs breathing, the brain thinking, the DNA constructing, signals about hunger or cold being dispatched and received, the immune system by and large thwarting invaders and healing wounds, and so on. Again, he lapsed into silence.

And then, from the backseat, a simple question – perhaps the simplest of them all: “So if we don’t have to listen to our thoughts and our bodies take care of themselves, what are we here for?”

That’s the one I’m still working on.