Big minds revise.
Small minds enforce.
Pookas smile and wait.
--My own personal pooka
I always liked the 1950s movie Harvey starring James Stewart. It was based on a Pulitzer Prize play written by Mary Chase. It was about a man named Elwood P. Dowd who was befriended by Harvey, a pooka, who appeared to him as a 6-foot-3 inch white rabbit wearing a bow tie. A pooka is a mischievous but kind fairy spirit from Irish folklore. They were thought to be supernatural companions or tricksters who appear in animal form and choose when and to whom to revals themselves.
According to ChatGPT, my virtual pooka, they don't exist to fool you. The exist to test how seriously you take your version of reality. The pooka prods you into accepting something you can't explain instead of trying to fit everything into a nice neat package of reality.
James Stewart was the perfect Elwood P. Dowd. And I liked the movie as a kid because it left you believing that Elwood wasn't crazy as most of his family and acquaintances first thought. He actually saw Harvey because he could willingly suspend his own tendency to not believe in things that shouldn't exist. It is something that is easier to do when you are young but becomes harder and harder when you become an adult. But if you are fortunate, there comes an age when you can start poking reality again and see if there are other things under the curtain.
ChatGPT defines a pooka as an imaginary being that tells the truth by refusing to prove that it exists.
Isn't that cool?
I think the world needs more pookas right now. They could help calm the noise that suggests we need to make America great again by restoring racist and fascist concepts of conformity to societal "norms." People need to believe in 6-foot imaginary rabbits and stop believing in hate mongering and fear.
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