Sunday, September 27, 2009

Childhood's fairy-land lost

Our childhood has a fascination for us, and most of us have a sense of longing for something lost in those years. Some path or toy or cloud reminds us of a fragment of what we used to feel, and we want it again. Perhaps the mood is a hunger for the wholehearted emotions of childhood, so uncomplicated and simple. Perhaps it is a sense that our more adult minds have chosen so much evil that childhood seems innocent. Your parents wouldn't agree about your innocence, having seen your character from day one, but that age seems less thoroughly tainted, and so pure by comparison. Perhaps it is lost wonder from the years when everything was new and we knew how to discover.

I think a part of it is a hunger for unity. Our lives should be whole, and most of our childhood's memories and perspectives are now lost to us. I do not easily remember even what life was like before I was married, though with effort I can retrieve it, and now and then I feel a little twinge of regret that parts of my life are fragmented and faded. I do not think we were made to lose our pasts so.

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