I remember that when I was a child, I was mocked by my peers because I still played in imaginary worlds with my friends. I suppose I was to be learning things like sports and other grown up things; things that were meant to bring me into the real world so that I may make myself productive. And though there is truth that every child must learn how to grow up, I was being told that childish perceptions and hopes needed to be killed in the process. We become grown up by admitting and rejecting our young perceptions and experiences of the world.
Children are very sensory creatures; what they know about the world around them is what they are either told or what they sense. Because everything is new to children, the world seems to be constantly giving out new pleasures and new wonders with no end in sight. It is infinite and without end, yet they embrace it. They charge into the endless cyclone of wonders and grab things that might be extremely dangerous or truly wonderful. Parents try to guide them to make sure that they do not hurt themselves, but children will always find dangerous things.
Sometimes, a parent is able to teach the child that the thing is dangerous and that it must be avoided, or that it might just be dangerous because they are young and unable to deal with it appropriately. However, not all dangers are averted, and all children eventually get hurt by reaching out for something they were not meant to touch. That hurt is then forcibly learned to be avoided. They are hurt more and more, and the result is to make more and more things off limits. They then learn to cling to those things that do not hurt them and try to make them more and more accessible. A child throws away the ball that he trips on and may decide to never play sports. In the meantime, he hides his favorite teddy bear to make sure his friends do not play with it.
It is at this point that we adults are supposed to teach a child that good things when used wrongly are harmful, but there is a good way to use them, at which point they can be pleasurable (Sports are fun if you play them right). Yet this is not what we are taught anymore. We are taught to believe there is no right way to go about doing something, only to pursue that which is pleasurable and avoid that which is dangerous. We are told that our reactions to our perceptions when we were children were right, and what needs to happen is for the world to become less dangerous. They would have a Lego without sharp ends. A rose without thorns. A lion with no teeth or claws. An adventure without risk. We are taught to want tameness and safety, and we need to dull and soften the world around us to get it. We are told to repress and destroy our old desire to jump into infinity, because anything can be there. We must be in control.
I was in Hawaii this past week and realized that I do not want a world I control. It struck me that many of the things I enjoyed in Hawaii, the trees, birds, sunset, clouds, ocean, dances, could be found almost anywhere. If I decided that all I wanted to enjoy was simply trees, I could do that at home. I could have made Hawaii just like any other place just by saying that she is the same. Yet if I tried to fit Hawaii into my box of “place”, I would have limited her splendor. The only way that I could see Hawaii as something separate from what I understood a “place” to be was by letting her be herself and accepting it. I needed not to tell her “You are this” but instead observe that “She is this.” I needed to not force myself on her but let her speak to me, however that may be.
This is the dilemma that we face with the infinite too. We can either accept it as something bigger and outside of ourselves, or we can try and force ourselves and our will upon it. The modern thought would have us try and subdue the infinite simply because it is something separate and uncontrollable. Romance (used in the old way, not in the modern way talking about sex) and imagination acknowledge the reality, dangers, and wonders of the infinite and trained children not to ignore it but to respond to it.
When we were sad as children, we cried and ran to mom or dad to be picked up and patted on the back because we knew that, if we didn’t, our sadness might go on forever. As modern adults, we are expected to “suck it up” and to not be a burden on anyone around us, but this compartmentalizes our sadness and, ironically, makes it go on forever. Romantic adults teach their children to deal with sadness and end it, because some things need to come to an end for better things to be cultivated.
They taught us about growth.
When we were happy as children, we laughed and bounced and chased other people around, trying to get those around us to be just as happy as we are, because maybe you could make happiness last forever. As modern adults, we may be allowed a celebratory fist pump, but we shouldn’t bounce or chase people around embracing them because we’d be acting like a crazy person, because no man can be happy forever. Romantic adults tried to be happy with their children, hoping that they would be happy forever and instilling in their children memories that burned passionately and spill over into the lives of their own children.
They taught us about joy.
When we are scared as children, we ran away from whatever scared us and hid in a safe place because the scary thing may come and hurt us. As modern adults, we are told that our fears are irrational and we should face them to show how nonexistent they are, but sometimes the scary thing is very real and devours us (it doesn’t matter if you convince yourself that a bear is really not that dangerous, they are). Romantic adults taught their children that there are things that no person could ever take from us unless we gave it to them, and that you sometimes have to stand up to scary things to defend the thing that do not have that kind of protection.
They taught us about bravery.
When we believed as children, the world was a huge place with things like fairies, gods, princesses, talking animals, and dragons. As modern adults, we are told not to believe in anything because reality is harsh and faith is a crutch for the child until he is ready to grow up, yet we have nothing romantic to say to any fellow Homo sapiens other than “you arouse feelings of attraction in me” and we cannot give hope to a suffering person because “we have not been in their situation and cannot know how it feels”. We cannot call someone beautiful if we do not believe in beauty and we cannot give hope to a suffering person if there is nothing to hope in. Romantic adults taught us that fairies are mischievous, gods are huge, princesses are beautiful, talking animals are fun, and dragons must be slain. They taught that mischief hurts people, wonder feeds the soul, beauty is worth pursuing, animals are to be enjoyed, and that we sometimes need to fight even if the problem is too enormous.
They taught us about righteousness.
It turns out that ignoring what we first sensed as children about the world being infinite is useless and feeble. We have, in fact, responded as scared children do. When faced with an infinite, we plug our fingers in our ears, shut our eyes, and say over and over “there is nothing there. It is dangerous. If I pretend it is not there, it will go away.” It turns out that saying that we need to get rid of how we perceived the world as children is not the productive thing to do at all. In fact, what imagination is doing is assuming that there is a world bigger than the one we currently understand and speculating as to what it is like. If anything, our imagination is not big enough to deal with infinity. Making our image smaller makes us completely ineffective in a large world. Accepting its bigness and learning how we must act is the only way of living. You can either ignore and die, or imagine and live.
