how wonderful is the essence of childhood innocence and naivety?
children who question even the simplest daily tasks you complete so many times you’ve lost count make you wonder what it was like to complete the task for the first time.
how wonderful is the simplicity in thinking, the yearning for knowledge that is yet to be obtained?
the question as to why you drink coffee instead of a babyccino or wine over juice allows for our true motives to be exposed; for we do not always consciously choose coffee over babyccino. the idea, to an average adult, would be absurd!
‘me, an adult, drinking a babyccino? how childish.’
but why wouldn’t you choose babyccino over coffee? coffee makes grown ups shake and trip over their words, eyelids jammed open exposing their bloodshot soul.
do we choose coffee for fear we’d be perceived as childlike if we’d have chosen babyccino? what is so terrifying about the ideology of childhood? why do we crave growing up so badly and with such haste? what is so shameful about the questioning of existence and looking knowledge in the eye, desperate to have the last word?
why don’t we choose juice over wine? is the taste of sweet comfort too overbearing for your tongue? does the colour of orange juice remind you of wednesday mornings when you come downstairs, keen to work with jellybeans in maths as your teacher had promised you the day before? or maybe the coloured counters which had been stored away for a while because a classmate was caught trying to eat one.
the truth is, wine is bitter. no matter how refined your taste might be, there is an undeniable bitterness in wine which adults love to ponder, the same way they love to ponder over pessimistic news stories that are equally as bitter. they discuss the wine, using pretentious words to describe the undertones and how sensual it tastes, refusing to acknowledge the overt bitterness they are so eager to gobble up when they return to sobriety.
‘it’s too sweet,’ they’d shake their heads at the palm which offers apple juice, while eagerly smiling and nodding at the dark, tinted glass which induces headaches.
how about the brittle roll of grey, tossed on our doorstep every morning? the one you ask me to fetch you in the youth of the day, when sparkling sun-rays dance on my face? what do you make of the fine print that tells you what is occurring on the side of the world submersed in slumber while you’re in your wake?
what do you make of the numbers that tell you it’s warm outside?
why not feel the warmth from the orange orb above yourself?
why not dance under the small droplets of the ‘mist’ setting on your hose?
and why do we lose ourselves to the pursuit of validation, to the judging eyes of the streetwalkers which our eyes never lasted more than a second on when we were younger?
i now write as someone who is tired, ability to think in a childlike manner worn down heavily from the constant chafing of dawning adulthood. but i also write in the hope that small moments like these will recur, like clouds in the sky clearing momentarily for the sun to smile at me.
though looking up i’m often met with a vast, grey face, i shall continue to smile at the silver wrinkles, engraved by years of laughter and juvenile innocence.