One of my earliest areas of interest as a writer was in writing short stories. I often used my study halls in high school to write fanciful stories about imaginary lands. I even had a science teacher who would let me read my stories to the class if she finished her lecture early.
One gem of a story idea was inspired by an odd panel in the family room of the house where I grew up. This one panel was 1/5 the width of all the others and it had a knot-hole toward the bottom.
I imagined a land of little people who lived inside the knot-hole of that panel. And the little people inside there had what I considered a utopian society.
My version of utopia? The little people all lived and worked in harmony and treated one another with kindness.
Brilliant right?
And what laws governed this utopia? None. None at all.
The people weren’t good and kind because laws told them to be, they were good and kind because they wanted to be.
I never quite got around to writing the knot-hole people’s story because somehow this was not like my other stories. It was more of a vision. And it felt too big and too important to reduce to a short story.
But this utopian vision has stayed with me ever since then…
Click the heart in the photo above read the rest of this essay at Life & Liberty and find out what that youthful vision still means to me today.
Jennifer Clark Tinker 