What I really always want to talk about is the ways we can help the world heal.
Not only are the needs too expansive to list, but there is nary a clear, nor singular, way to solve any one concern. But I believe that if we have complaints, then we must also have ideas. And ideas are what community and purpose are built on.
Honing in on the ideas that spark mutual excitement can be challenging, and so I ask about the one thing that I'm known to obsess over: Childhood. Which conveniently, and without much debate, I believe to be a cultural universal. More than a time period or a phase in a life, childhood is a culmination of the senses, before perspective makes some kind of sense (but -notably- not necessarily fact) of the confusing global unknowns. Before our skin becomes calloused, our nose familiar to the scents, and our eyes blind to the curious patterns and the possible ways. Before our ego learns to influence our actions, leading us to prioritize our desires over our needs.
Childhood is that magical time of learning to navigate the metaphysical world of delights and upsets.
A friend used to lament, telling me how he missed the prowess of being a kid. Not his personal experience, but the inherent invincibility of childhood.
For much of my later childhood and teen years, I sensed an inevitable fate, an opportunity or destiny to return to childhood. More than a nostalgic mirage, I could never pinpoint when, how, or why this opportunity would present itself, just that it would. A return, not to a time, but to the sensation of invincibility and learning. In considering this now, I recognize invincibility's connection to stress and anxiety. And the relationship stress and anxiety have with the unknown. And the ego, a mask for our vulnerability, shutting down curiosity and out the unknown.
Returning to childhood, to this perception of invincibility, is not a concept I entirely reject. In fact, somehow, somewhere along the way, the perspective of insignificance returned to me.
I feel as invincible today as my childhood self did. Did I miss the moment of return or had it never truly left?
My skin is calloused, and I seldom find flavors and scents to be unfamiliar. But with the muting of these physical sensations, so too has subsided my ego.
Once seeming incomprehensibly large or small depending on the day, the scale of the world came to make sense over time. But in a way the Universe hasn't ever managed to.
Less unsettling, I feel oddly reassured by my own insignificance, a sensation I can't help but relate to childhood invincibility.
I worry about the concerns of the world. And I love discussing their resolve with friends and strangers. From plastics littering the oceans and earth to generational and systemic trauma, our attempts to live autonomously and sustainably often feel futile. Yet, recognizing our shared concern seems to bring us closer together.
The list is long, and often overwhelming, at which point I find myself returning to a very child-like ignorance-is-bliss frame of mind.
Fuck it, I say. We're doomed, whatever that means.
My life is but a fraction of a blip in infinite space and time. What does it actually matter?
And this brings me peace of mind, if only for a moment. And I find and do the thing I want to do in that moment. And inevitably, it’s something that might help make the world a better place.
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