Pete and I both had this feeling that children see the world in all its splendour but as we grow up that gets knocked out of us; they get told how to view things, what to appreciate and what is good and what is bad.
Bad education makes a chore out of looking at things that should be wondrous.
We should encourage people to be able to look at something beautiful and see its beauty magnified in our minds. That is education – understanding and celebrating the wonders of the universe.
I totally agree.
Ok… So I’ve fixed lunch, made macaroni salad and Hello Oreo dessert for the BBQ at 4, I’ve just written GRACE on 150 rocks for my son’s sermon tomorrow, NOW I can get ready to go see Greg. I had one too many irons in the fire this morning. And I haven’t heard a peep out of Drollery’s for awhile. He’s painting the house. I’ll bet he’s asleep in the shame. It’s over 100 here.
That’s supposed to be Jello dessert!
What? He’s painting the house with jello?
Having time to stand and stare!
Lol to the surreal comment trail 🙂 When our kids were little I found it so delightful to view the world again through their eyes as they discovered and delighted in new things. I will never forget our flight home from Brisbane to Adelaide with our youngest son, Christopher, whom we had just been to pick up from Manila. He sat the whole 1.5 hour flight fascinated by and playing with one of those bendy straws.
Children have that wondrous connection to life. They are vibrant and their delight, inquisitiveness and imagination is wonderful to behold. If we could only bottle it.
Fab drawing, puts me in mind of Wordsworth, hope you don’t mind me quoting this marvellous description of ice-skating from The Prelude – my childhood in a snapshot!
And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and visible for many a mile
The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom,
I heeded not their summons: happy time
It was indeed for all of us–for me
It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
The village clock tolled six,–I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like an untired horse
That cares not for his home. All shod with steel,
We hissed along the polished ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures,–the resounding horn,
The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.
Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cut across the reflex of a star
That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed
Upon the glassy plain; and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me–even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.
That’s great Dave. Children have that ability to totally connect with the wonder and joy don’t they? I’ve still got a few vestiges of that left.
I’m trying to recapture mine but I fear it’s run off into the woods …
Run after it Dave!