Child wisdom

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magno... See more

when we are born, we experience reality with very few “priors” – preexisting beliefs, expectations, conceptual schemas through which to filter what we see. And so a child’s experience is an endless explosion of vividness. Slowly we start to make sense of the world, we start to notice repeating patterns, we start to establish boundaries between “me”... See more

As anyone who has been interrogated by a smart aleck child knows it takes maybe four whys in a row before the veneer of adult knowing falls apart completely. The first why is easy to answer, the second why requires pulling from the jigsaw puzzle of stock answers and handed-down cliches. Further whys beyond this and things start becoming worryingly ... See more

I was thinking about all the time spent browsing with no real aim, and how even as a 12 year old, there was some small intuitive sense of the things I was drawn to.

“I didn’t know what kind of person, what kind of adult I’m going to be. I really don’t know. I really hated to become an adult. So in my heart, I’m still a child.” Yohji-san smiles.