It’s strange, really, the way in which we spend the first years of our lives being immersed in the world and its wonders — being made, in other words, to understand that there is an ever-widening circle of people and places and things for us to discover — only to one day be told that all of that wonder must gradually be put away.

For me, it started happening around the fourth or fifth grade. It was then that my classmates and I were first made to think that there were only a few things to which we could respectably devote our days, few things to which, going forward, anybody would want to assign any importance. Writing, of course, wasn’t one of those things, nor were any of the more creative pursuits to which we’d been so eager to commit our time.

Similar acts of shepherding took place throughout my life, though, and, indeed, they continue to take place throughout much of our lives. There is, for instance, that rather unusual experience whereby we’re told to pick a career, told to narrow the great expanse of our identity into something that will be able to pay the bills. And, as if that wasn’t already a difficult enough task, we’re also told that we can only pick one career, and that, even then, we can only pick that one career from whatever handful of most acceptable careers has been made available to us.

It isn’t just limited to the careers we choose or the activities to which we devote our time, though. No, it can — and so often does — extend to the ways in which we’re told to behave, or to the beliefs we’re told are necessary for us to maintain, leaving us to feel as though there are only a few well-trodden paths upon which we’re able to build our lives. And all because even our most basic sense of wonder kept being pushed further and further out of the way.

Waving from my desk,
– J