It is a strange business to become aware as we grow up, for our minds to be developing all the while and for us mostly to be unaware of it. I am not the first to wonder how learning a language, and following examples of those closest to us in order to survive lays down patterns of thinking that control us for the rest of our lives. Nor am I the first the wonder at the whole idea that we are ‘formed’ at a time in our lives when we have no choices and in a milieu in which there is little training of any kind – every parent has the human race in their hands and none of them have a single formal class on how to develop a fair minded human being.
I do wonder though how it is that the imagination seems to get lost in growing up. That concepts and thoughts we have as children become blurred and vanish. This is less to do with how we are trained as we develop into adults, but the whole concept of child and adult itself. There is no division, the only difference is sexual maturity – and there’s an oxymoron if there ever was one.
But why we lose sight of taking joy in joy itself and being pleased with the simple is because as adults we learn to look down upon childhood. Childhood is how we got here and we should treasure the child in us always.