As we get older, we lose our childlike sense of wonder with life. Having three kids gives me daily reminders of how amazed they can be with the simplest things of life (though, they are getting a bit older and more jaded now!).
This growing cynicism with life as we age can make our existence rather bleak. Day in and day out, we feel the grind and monotony of life. A treadmill kind of existence.
This problem seems exacerbated in urban settings, where we are subtracted away from the wildness of nature to which we once belonged.
And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus - Matthew 18:3
What causes this solidification of life? Where did the supple freshness of childhood go?
It is because of our mental concepts. Our attempt to control life by reducing everything to ideas, formulas and systems means we begin to see the world as simple repetition, as opposed to constant newness.
When I step outside, I no longer see a vibrant, growing tree, swaying in the breeze - I see simply another “tree”. An instance of a category or idea. A type or pattern I have seen thousands of times before. Boring. Lifeless.
This way of seeing the world has been ingrained into us by society. Our schooling system and early home life is geared to make us productive members of society, and being “productive” involves seeing the world as a bunch of abstract concepts, which we can manipulate for our own ends.
After a while, all we see are the concepts.
But what happens when there is a chance to catch our breath, slow down, and watch life as it unfolds?
Do it now, if you can. Take five minutes and just watch the world unfold. What do you see?
This is what I “see”. I hear the sizzling of food in a pan. The scrape of kitchen utensils. Children excitedly playing a game together, their boisterous yells and high pitched squeals swelling and waning. I feel the soft touch of an evening breeze on my legs. The smell of cooking food. A slight tingling ache in my side from a sport’s injury.
Aliveness. New. Never before seen or felt.
Once we can see the world as it is, without the wet, cloying, blanket of concepts, it becomes alive again.
Not only that. We can see the world being spoken into being at each moment. For there is nothing static about the world. It swells and it contracts, like music or speech. A thought arrives and it is gone again. A sight appears, modulates, and changes again. A loud sound explodes into being then retreats.
The world is dynamic, ever changing. A wild thing. It is a song, or words spoken. Nothing is permanent, except, perhaps, in a special way, the knowing of it all.
Knowing is not a “thing”. It is not a concept. It is a kind of ever present becoming. It is the silence from which the world is born, but it is also the wild world born. There is nothing that is, that is not known. It would be a strange and impossible thing for something to be that is never, in fact, known.
This I-don’t-know-what which is knowing, is the stage on which this ever new play is performed. It is also the play itself. It is all one “thing”.
It is pure giftedness. To who? To itself.
The gift of life and manifestation to Itself.
Don’t let this boisterous gift of life go past without appreciating the ever new miracle.