Last night, I started to think about what it was like to be a child again. Not about what I wore or how I spoke, but how I perceived things. When everything I looked at was a puzzle. When everything I looked at was a toy. When adults approached me and hugged me and all I was thinking was I really hope that’s my aunt because when you’re young, you don’t recognize faces even when you’re supposed to.
In fact, children begin with naïve egocentrism that allows them to believe that only they exist. Even objects aren’t permanent- in their minds, an object only exists when a he or she is looking straight at it. However, we can’t blame the little tykes for only seeing their way, since their brains are simply trying to avoid a sensory overload. They are constantly making brand new links between sight, touch, smell, taste, and sounds to help comprehend their existence in the world. We should probably give them a break. Imagine being in a new sensory situation almost every moment- you remember when you walked into a room with a different lighting and it seemed like the strangest place on earth? Or the first time you heard an egg crack on the floor? The first time you tasted lemon ice? No wonder kids are always screaming. It’s just the sheer excitement of such new, but ordinary, occurrences. And the inevitable, incessant confusion that comes along with it.
We don’t even have a notion of time until we realize that 2 things can happen at once. Only when we start to experience the duration and succession of time can we realize it only goes in one direction.
Little by little,
we start to get what’s going on,
but I kind of liked that confusion,
it was comfortable.
In any sense, I don’t see why we can’t just be children at heart. Why must we be so serious, follow the structures of common conversation and suppress our inner excitement for the simple colors and textures of life,
everywhere around us?
…it’s all still here. It’s only our perception of it that has changed.
So,
F*ck it!
let’s play make believe &
skin our knees playing 4 square &
throw shit out of trees
Artwork by Shan Jiang
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