On childlike innocence, being an observer, and understanding the messiness of the world
February 14, 2019
Dear Eva,
Last Friday after returning from Miami, I picked Jonah up from school, and we went to the cafe across the street for a snack. As we ate, he told me about the things he was learning at school about the Civil Rights Movement. Later, on the way to the car, his voice got quiet and he said, “Mom, I am kind of ashamed to be white.” At age 6, he is starting to recognize realities of our world that many grown adults fail to see.
I am so proud to be this little guy’s mom.
Of course, he still has a few things left to learn. Later that weekend, he happily announced that a friend at school had told him about serial killers. Bill and I gave each other a look and asked him what they were. His reply, “Serial killers throw cereal at you, and it kills you.”
At various times over the years, I have had the instinct of wanting to freeze time when he or Simon says something that exhibits this level of child-like innocence. But I’ve been thinking more about that instinct lately. Their innocence is really just evidence of their small worlds, their narrow understanding of the range of human experiences, of what may come in their own lives and those of people they love, an assumption of unwavering goodness in others and in the future. I suppose it might be better if life were all puppy dogs and rainbows (though I’m not so sure that’s true, since the contrast is what gives the light its fullness and wonder). But regardless, everyone above a certain age knows this is not our reality. How odd to want to pretend, to want to extend the naivete of our kids longer than we should.
Anyway, why must it be sad to to better understand the messiness of the world, of humans, of our lives? Maybe the adult instinct to want to freeze child-like innocence says something more about the failure of so many of us to get comfortable with the co-existence of evil and goodness, joy and misery, life and death than it does about the beauty of childhood? I am not convinced that maturation has to be sad. In fact, I’m pretty sure my boys will teach me a thing or two as they go through the long process of learning to cope with the complexity of being human.
The other day I sat on a chair watching both boys play. Simon wearing only a purple princess Pull-Up, his belly protruding, his blond curls bouncing as he fought the imaginary bad guys with pure delight. Jonah, bare-chested, hair overgrown, eyes sparkling as he would grab and open the Ninjago character encyclopedia to bark out orders about who their next opponents would be in this epic battle. They had not a care in the world. Even the looming naptime felt like a distant concern for Simon despite me announcing it was only 10 minutes away and counting.
I think part of me might call this unbridled joy in play innocence, something they will unlearn as they age. But why? Because they will learn to worry about their future? Because they will learn to be somewhere else in their minds other than right where they are? To what end? This feels like something that children have mastered far better than adults — being present in the moment, not dwelling on what might be, even just 10 minutes later! The more I think about it, the less I think this is innocence. I think it’s wisdom. The challenge is just honoring that wisdom as you take in more information about the existence of evil, the possibility of pain, the lack of certainty in tomorrow.
May I someday grow as wise as a child.
Yours,
Sarah
February 14, 2019
Dear Sarah,
I’m re-reading our letters from last week, in which we were very much on the same wavelength. I’m thinking about what you were saying about being careful not to view our lives from afar for too long. How do I know if I’m doing that? Could it be possible that a key way of how I live is to view myself living? I think I may often put my personal situations up against the grand scheme of things, as you said — I think my intention is to see and enjoy what I have, a way of reminding myself how good I have things. I suppose it goes both ways — putting a “bad” happening in perspective can show me how it is not actually that “bad,” even if it seems so, and a “good” thing gets an extra glimmer of enjoyment. I think I take this approach when I do as a way of rescuing myself a bit from moments of pain or challenge — maybe it’s like an encouraging slap on the back to myself, rather than the hug one needs sometimes. I don’t recall exactly when I said the thing you referenced — I wonder what moment or particular combination of moments it sprouted from?
My dad is a fairly good amateur photographer and as a youth I also wanted to be a photographer. I may still want to be a photographer. The photographer is (most) always an observer. I think it’s in my nature to observe, to frame, to think about what falls inside the frame, and what outside. When we were in Miami last week I stopped into a gallery that caught my eye and had a very pleasant conversation with the gallery director, who at one point asked if I was a photographer. Then I wondered, does he ask everyone if they are a photographer? Do I seem like a photographer? Do I seem like an observer, even to someone I just met?
I’m not sure exactly when I’m reflecting on or observing my life, and when I’m just living it. I want to hear more about what you’re thinking about when you write that our own reality is the only one we get the chance to experience, and that it would be a shame to experience it from a distance. Is this true? How is the truth different for me and for you? How distant is too distant? Is any distance all right? What if my reality is made up in part of what my reality looks like from a distance, what I observe? I might be getting lost inside some fold of my own grey matter right now — but I am genuinely curious about the difference between living, and observing myself living (observing myself from within myself). I am enjoying writing this weird letter to you — it feels like being — but the letter is all about observing. Help!
Anyway, on photography, I continue to be fascinated by the play between what is real — what is manufactured, what is captured, what is contorted, what is manipulated, what isn’t manipulated, what is original — what is real. I am no historian of photography but it seems only fairly recently that we’ve thought more broadly about how photography can so easily be manipulated, with digital technologies, and with the deep crafting of the scene that is photographed. And manipulation was happening much earlier — I am recalling a hoax about fairies, a series of photographs intended to prove their existence. (After this letter I may have to pounce down the rabbit’s hole of a history of doctored photography, of photographic scandals and ruses.)
Before I leap — I wanted to come back to last week’s letters and the idea of meeting new people and the energy it requires, and whether that is because we are performing in some way. I think some of the energies of meeting new people are on presenting good first impressions — drawing from the self to choose the best bits to show on a first interaction. The longer you know someone, and someone knows you, the more information they have in piecing together their particular understanding of you — like a lifetime’s worth of photos, angles, ages, settings, frames — rather than a single view or two from which to try to build a narrative. It can be difficult to determine what to lead with. Lately when I meet new people I try more and more to be the most me, in the context of the new person I am meeting. What bits of me resonate with bits of them? What is the true me that carries from context to context? (Should we start providing advance reading to the new people we meet? Perhaps we’re already doing this in the age of the internet.)
Onward, until next week,
Your friend,
Eva