Growing old — it’s not something I think of too often at my tender age of 19, but it still pops into my head from time to time. I wonder if the people I know now will “grow up” to be just as lively, or lonely. And I wonder whether the spark that most of us can capture because we are young and life is still relatively unpolluted, and our war is still very young, will be maintained. How do you avoid getting caught up in a culture? How do you deconstruct until the things that truly matter are made real? How will things change as we spiral into a war against a nonentity like terrorism?
It makes me miss being 8 years old. I miss the purity of the feelings then. When you were mad at your parents, you were convinced you really hated them, and when you were happy about your first-place crayon drawing at school, you felt like you were on top of the world. That kind of simplicity is something I think we need to reconnect with — if only as a means of survival.
The way to rediscover our purity is easy, though admittedly, extremely idealistic. We just need to smile more.
The most uncomplicated thing in the world is a child’s grin. Whenever I’m waiting impatiently in line for groceries, late for work, or stuck in traffic, coming across a toothy grin from a child who isn’t afraid to stare at strangers always throws me off balance and makes me smile back.
God bless the 21st century. In this age of post post-modernism, everything is done or said with an ironic half-shrug, with a Dawson’s Creek-like aside that acknowledges that we’re all in on the joke and don’t really mean anything. It’s enveloping until it becomes exhausting, and somehow, it seems we can’t bring ourselves out of orbit.
So I want to bottle that stuff — kids’ smiles. I want to have instant, uncomplicated grins follow me wherever I go — whenever I get annoyed over the things that don’t really matter. Whenever I get lost in cynical irony and allow myself to conceal pure emotions under too many layers. Whenever I find myself walking around campus stealing guilty glances that size everybody up against a media image that none of us live up to.
One day this summer, I was riding on the “Tube” and was crammed in between an old man’s wooden cane and a baby stroller. The old man had a half-wrinkled smile that seemed to almost echo the child’s, and they stared at each other knowingly, in acknowledgement of their wisdom. It seemed more amusing than significant while in the train, but as I stepped through the sliding doors, I was struck by the purity of what I had just experienced. It was as though innocence and joy — the things truly elemental in life — had come full circle and reconnected through both of them.
I feel too disconnected sometimes. I don’t want to ask someone as they pass by how they are doing and catch the fleeting one-word answer. I want to examine hands, little hands, wrinkled hands, and hold these hands, understand them. I want to be able to want this and not subconsciously comment on how it sounds like an awfully blended combination of chicken-soup-new-age-faux-inspirational-Oprahesque ideas played to a Yanni soundtrack.
Because I think that society (for reasons that have been ranted on too many times already) has forgotten about those kid smiles that can throw anybody for a loop. I want to cut through it all and feel safe in doing so. Or feel unsafe and not care. I just don’t want to float.
I’m not pleading for the world to resurrect the tacky “Have a Nice Day” buttons and peace signs of the sixties. I don’t want people to hold hands and sing “We are the World” and pretend to like each other. But the poet W.B. Yeats wrote, “The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time,” and I want to suspend time.
Kathleen Heil is a religious studies sophomore. Reach her at ladiekadie@hotmail.com.
