“I included a fellow in my book, Callings, who described an interaction he once had with his seven-year-old daughter. She came to him one day and asked him what he did at work. He told her that he worked at the college, and his job was to teach people how to draw. He said she looked back at him, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?”
—Gregg Levoy, Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life
Put on some music with a good beat and any child under the age of five starts dancing; they can’t help it. Children are born knowing how to dance.
Give a child blank paper and crayons, and they draw, even if their fine motor skills don’t yet allow them to make shapes recognizable to an adult. The child can clearly name what they drew. Children are born knowing how to draw.
Children love being outside. How many times have you seen a child (or video of a child) who is inconsolable because they want to go out but a parent has said no (because it’s raining, too cold, still dark or some other sensible reason). Children know it is good to be outside in all weathers and times of the day.
It seems incredible, as expressed by the 7-year-old in the quote above, that we would forget these things.
And maybe we don’t literally forget, but we stop doing them anyway. Or only do them when no one is watching, or in highly managed or controlled ways we’ve learned to call “appropriate.” Somehow, we learn to live smaller, and with less joy, than the children we were.
Thank goodness that there are people who can help us to see all of this with new eyes, chief among them poets like Mary Oliver, in whose poems that child still sings. Her poem “The Journey” talks about leaving those voices admonishing “control” and “appropriate” behind, about ignoring those who claim our gaze needs to be focused elsewhere and firmly fastening our attention on that voice that comes from within ourselves. Our path curves, if we are courageous enough to stay the course. If we are brave enough to relearn what we were born knowing.
The Journey
by Mary OliverOne day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
—Jenifer Hanson, Prairiewoods director