The boy is going on a month of school now, and he's loving it. He has a best friend, Chase, he's played with girls, and has almost learned when he has to be still and when he can go crazy. Recess is his favorite time, except for everything else he does, especially Play-doh day. I am so impressed by his abilities, attitude--even when it's a bad attitude--and natural ebullience.That's him in the orange shirt in the photo. Besides school and karate, he's also doing a couple of months of soccer one evening a week. We were a little afraid it would all be too much, but that's not the case at all. He loves running on the field. It won't take too much longer for him to realize that the other boys are teammates and are to be a part of the team goal of winning. So far, the 4-5 year olds haven't shown much desire to actually win anything as much as they simply like to run with the ball and kick it into the net. Of course, a few of them--Jordan included--like to follow the ball into the net. It will be a trip to see how the games go, and I'm sure I'll be as impressed by his progress in soccer as I have been with his karate and his schooling.
Taking an afternoon walk yesterday, I saw a group of preteens accompanied by a boy not much older than Jordan, maybe 5 or 6. While the older boys were trying to be all bad and cool, wearing their hats sideways and shoving each other around like creeps (excuse the judgment call), the child skipped and twirled now and then, showing the energy and pure joy of life still inside him. The joy of a child. Where does it come from and where does it go?
1 comment:
You write:
Taking an afternoon walk yesterday, I saw a group of preteens accompanied by a boy not much older than Jordan, maybe 5 or 6. While the older boys were trying to be all bad and cool, wearing their hats sideways and shoving each other around like creeps (excuse the judgment call), the child skipped and twirled now and then, showing the energy and pure joy of life still inside him. The joy of a child. Where does it come from and where does it go?
THAT is indeed the question. The only question, really. How do we learn to change from such happy little beings into the monsters we become. I think it's not even just that we lose the joy; we lose richness of meaning and experience generally. Reading a wonderful book at the moment, Gilbert Durand _The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary_--Durand argues that "the transition from the mental life of the child...to 'adulto-centrism' represents a narrowing, and a progressive repression of the meaning of metaphors" (33). So not only do we become evil, our view of the world becomes impoverished (and the two are connected, I think)!
And, of course, the preteens you mention have only begun the journey toward adult stupidity. I have had to disable comments on a number of my blogs because a bunch of presumably older creatures were posting obscene remarks there--see, I criticized another professorial blogger for his take on university politics, and all of his creepy allies decided to drop steaming dung on my blog, including the one I write on my daughter. Fabulous world we've made!
In a dream I have from time to time, I leave this all and escape to the woods, where I sit happily with my family and roast marshmallows while the whole thing burns...
Post a Comment