When Goosebumps Appear

     I could tell from the number of shares it was bound to be good, but it was the repeated reference to "goosebumps" that sent me on a quest. How could so many people get goosebumps, and how could they know that "I" would get goosebumps? Surely KNOWING something goosebump-worthy was coming, would be reason enough NOT to get goosebumps, after all, goosebumps are not a thinking thing, and I was thinking way too long about this.
    Well familiar with the show concept--(The "X" Factor being another version of Britain's Got Talent)-- I braced. So this guy's going to knock it out of the park. I say "Bring it" and I click the little arrow.
     Nice dramatic contrast: Christopher Mahoney...visably uncomfortable, trembling with nerves, is an average Joe, who is clearly going to knock our socks off with his talent just like Susan Boyle did a few years back. And, true to form and just like Susan, this dude also delivers.  No biggie.  But why, (even when trying not to) did I TOO, get goosebumps? After all, there was no sudden temperature shift...no bolt of surprise. I had ample warning of what was in store--you'd think that would be a buzz kill for goosebumps, but no. I got 'em too. So when it comes to goosebumps of a non-chill nature, what's really happening to our bodies?

(To test your own goose bump meter, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1T9-I3wx8I)
   
     I recalled from my "I Didn't Know That" days, that goosebumps were named for chicken skin... newly plucked chickens to be exact...Chickens whose skin muscles still worked to pull up the feathers as a protective reflex against the sudden cold (only they were pulling up phantom feathers...cause they'd been plucked. The bird was basically nekked as we'd say in the country).
     Same things happens with human skin, only in our case the tiny skin muscles go to work plumping up phantom fur, which we've since evolved out of~
     But what's with emotional goosebumps? How come certain songs, a particular performance or something totally unrelated to weather can generate the exact same effect to your skin, in a bodily reflex originally designed to help protect us? What happens when a spine tingles? What happens when something sends a chill?
     Biologically speaking, the answer is adrenaline happens. The same hormone that puts us in fight or flight mode, designed to keep us alive when facing a threat like freezing to death, is the exact same hormone that does it for us when we hear the National Anthem done right. But why, when we're neither in a mood to fight or fly, can such moments trigger our bodies this way?
     Science has no great answer for this one save to say in our evolution we have some residual stuff still remaining in the pipeline.... But I have another theory.
     My own goosebumps (being a goose bump officianado, now that I've been googling for 2 hours on where they come from) ...mine come in moments of spiritual happenstance. To me, goosebumps are a spiritual barometer. The moments they pop up (when I'm not encountering cold air) are magical moments of sheer awe. I call them my Namaste moments, when the God in me spots the God in someone else...a little fifth dimensional high-five of spiritual recognition.
     By this definition, the fight or flight rule still applies, but not in the way of our ancestors. When I'm having a spine-tingling moment I want to fly alright...But not away from. I want to fly TO. There is no fight in me (save to fight back the occasional tears), but the flight in me is alive and well, though anything but fearful. This flight resonates as a matter of longing for something higher...something greater than myself, which I believe also to be our wiring. These moments we want to last longer..we like how they make us feel for they bring out the highest in us, which is to me is to me, why we tingle...It is flight in the most spiritual sense of the word.
    (Yes, I have been known to analyze such things to smithereens, but having spent the last two hours now googling what happens really when our flesh goes prickly, well... it's as good a theory as anybody's. Furthermore, it's my theory so I'm sticking with it.)