My grandchildren are my teachers. Aged (almost) 8 and 11, they have imagination, curiosity, ask questions and follow their fascination. I also admire their openness and non-judgement; they approach everything with an enquiring mind and have a built-in sense of what is true and therefore unhesitatingly question false assumptions. They don’t have baggage (yet) that hampers their creativity. I love that they seem to see the world as a place of wonder and mystery and have a huge thirst to learn.
They are at their best when they follow their fascination. The oldest one is co-writing a book with her cousin (also aged 11). At a recent family Zoom session, she enthusiastically told us they had written 165 pages and were half way through writing the book. I’m now helping her with her drawing skills so she can develop her illustrated characters in different situations. These children live in a world of imagination and creativity.
Growing up can be overrated. As children we are often discouraged or even rebuked for daydreaming (this happened to me a lot at school). Children are often accused of lying when they are only talking about the imaginary worlds they’ve created. Then there is the societal and institutional culture of conforming and competing. Our worth and our children are measured according to winning or losing or where we rank in socially engineered tables that label us good, mediocre or failures. Our fragile self-esteem often relies on where we are placed in these hierarchies.
Children experience everything with a fresh, unbiased, pure mind. It is no coincidence that both Picasso and Christ said we need to become like children again. Picasso said he spent his life learning to see like a child, “It took me… a lifetime to paint like a child” and Christ said we need to be born again, like a child, to relearn spiritual qualities, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”. Ironically, learning to see and be like children is no easy task. Einstein however lets us into a secret, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed”.
Where do we start? Adulthood brings opportunities, independence, responsibility, family and careers. We can easily lose our sense of just “being” that characterises childhood as we become preoccupied with racking up qualifications and curating our careers as we learn to become experts in something. We stop being curious. We easily lose our true sense of self that we had as children. Having reached a mature age (I’m 67), I look back with bemusement at my modest achievements that marked me as a success in other people’s eyes. My values have changed. I’ve reached an age when success seems irrelevant but life feels all the more filled with potentiality. I’m relearning how to learn driven by a sense of curiosity about what fascinates me. The first lesson I’m learning is overcoming a belief in success and a fear of failure. It may seem strange to admit it but I now spend most of my time only doing what I enjoy, cheered on by my wife, Esmyr, who has given me permission to “only do what you want to do”.
What about you? Have you rediscovered what you really love to do? If you’ve managed to read this far it is worth taking the time to think about what fascinates you. Do share your thoughts here; we can all learn from each other.
I’m stopping here while I think about what learning to play means in practice!