Where Do The Children Go?
Friends, all of us have probably played with bubbles when we were children. These children are no exception.
There is something magic about bubbles, the way they float, the colors that slide around their shiny surface, the pop each one makes when it is caught.
Then there is something magic about children playing too. They are so innocent, so full of joy and fun and laughter. Yet somehow they change.
They seem to enter a dark, invisible corridor and when they emerge as young adults they are changed. Dramatically.
And this change continues and the gap between childhood and adulthood widens and suddenly childhood is lost, vanishes, as if it had never been.
If we didn’t have fading photographs we might think that childhood was merely a dream, one that, sometimes, we wish we could recapture and relive but we never can. Gone is the trust, the innocence, the ability to enjoy simple things like the fun of sharing.
No, life propels us forward into the dark, invisible corridor whether we want to or not and, finally, we enter a world made by adults for adults, one that, too often, is filled with ugliness, with lies and deceit, with cruelty and worry, with greed and pain and infidelity.
Look again at the photograph. Which world would you prefer to be in?
How did we lose our beautiful innocence?
Is there a way back to it?
How I wish I knew an answer to your question about how to get back to that wonderful state of childhood. The best we seem to be able to do is spend some time playing with children. So that only for a few moments we can forget what it menas to be an adult with all it’s concerns and worries.
When I see and read about the horrors that so many people commit in this world everyday I often think that those people where once small, sweet, innocent children like my grandson . How did they grow to become such monsters?
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The dark corridor that changes us so dramatically must have to do with the deep programming and indoctrination we receive combined with the unstoppable genetic changes, Jeannie.
It seems we lose something wonderful and it is replaced by something that, too often, is tragic and ugly.
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Bubbles
(an allegory of life?)
It is often said, ‘the best things in life are free’. How true!
Just think: a bowl of soapy water and a clay pipe, or straw. From these simple materials one can have hours of fun blowing bubbles, beautiful bubbles, perfectly round, a floating happiness, painted with iridescent rainbows, ephemeral, and mysterious. Are they bubbles of water filled with air, or bubbles of air surrounded by water? By what strange power are they formed?
All that is left when a bubble bursts are drops of water. Gone, are the momentary magic and the fleeting joy. Despite this loss, childhood joy remains, because new bubbles can be blown. That is the nice thing about bubbles: the magic can be recaptured again and again. Perhaps this is why bubble solutions are the world’s best selling toy. Bubble solutions are not bubbles; they are potential bubbles, waiting for the breath of life to set them free.
Bubbles are the carriers of dreams. They are not all made from water and air. Some are part of reality; others arise from the imagination. All are filled with dreams. Like their watery cousins, exhaled air mysteriously brings them to life, so that they grow and glow with a fatal fascination more deadly than Lorelei’s song.
Almost anyone can blow small bubbles, but only an adept’s skill gives rise to really large bubbles that bewitch millions with their fatal attraction. At everyday salerooms around the countryside, auctioneers will blow up their wares so that the unwary will part with their wealth in exchange for the enticing aura of a simple object. Caveat emptor! How few of us do. We surround ourselves with trivia, holding them dear until the enchantment is lost when the bubble bursts.
Adepts are able to blow bubbles that encircle the globe. The earth is filled with Lorelei’s lullaby, and ears are filled with the irresistible allure of the siren’s song. The bubble floats up and up. Fame! Fortune! Wealth untold. The adepts’ plans are full-filled and their purses filled full.
The bubble bursts. Not even the auctioneer’s trivia remain as a comfort to those who have lost everything.
But potential persists: for another lift, at another time, on a beguiling bubble, blown from the hot air of the adept’s lips.
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David G Reply:
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Nice piece of writing, David!
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