Staring out of the hotel window at Tianjin and having just gotten back from Tianjin World Financial Centre, I have lots of thoughts swirling in my head. Crazy Life (performed by Toad The Wet Sprocket) is playing in the background. I think I am just excited about the future.
Writing a post late at night often lead to funny situations. The last post had S and J confused, and made S as young as J all over again.
What if we all don’t grow up but stay as kids? Will the world be a better place? Forget for a moment that we need to become adults before we procreate. And that babies come from storks that flew to the chimney and delivered them (or else you’d argue and say that we will die off after one generation). Where will we be now?
I was with J for an hour or two at the indoor playground at the neighbourhood mall. It is her typical Saturday activity. It is something she will wait patiently from Monday to Friday, before declaring to me after breakfast that we should go kai-kai and go playground. She has accepted the fact that we first have to go for lunch (so that she has “strength” to play) and that she has to leave when we say so (because she would have played hard and tired), only to detour to the arcade next door (so that she can have her finale). It is a day she counts down to every weekday night before going to bed. If she has her way, the world will be a big, big playground and everyday is Saturday (or Sunday, but preferably Saturday, because Sunday comes with the disappointment of the approaching Monday at night before bed).
Her day at the playground started without me, but with S. When I caught up to give S a break and took over, J was playing building blocks with some kids. She couldn’t really fit in. She was the youngest and kids there were about double her age. They could build tall towers, but J was building only forts. A kid, wanting to build a taller tower, asked J for a piece, and J, without hesitation, handed one of her pieces away. The kid thank her, to which J replied a simple, “You are welcome.” As the tower got taller, one of the kids, unhappy with the height he has achieved, took a piece from another and a minor struggle ensued. No fighting. No screaming. No crying. With a few that-is-mine argument between the kids, it was suddenly all over as if it never even started. And J took it all in without moving an inch. When the tussle ended, J turned around and said to me, “Naughty boy-boy, hor? Take things from small boy-boy.” If J has her way, she’d police the world so that everyone plays fairly.
J moved on to the slide, the trampoline, avoided the balloon house (she seems to have lost interest in the boring activity of chasing balloons around), pool of plastic balls (so that she can dive in) and more slide. I stood at a distance to let her venture and explore the environment on her own (I got this from a programme on cheetahs on Discovery, and maybe from some advice from other parents). I soon realized she was shadowing another kid, staying close but at a distance, testing his reaction, imitating him to break the opposition defence, and making attempts to attract attention through sudden shrieks and loud laughter (which started making J look as if she is like a cheetah). To us adults, it will be stalking. Unlike adults with negative motives, J just wanted someone to interact and to play. If she has her way, all kids will be friends.
J eventually got her prey, and they both ran around, jumped into plastic balls, annoyed each other by throwing balls at each other (except that the boy’s father and I both prevented them from doing it) and simply had fun. Falling short of holding each other hands and walked around the playground, they were a pair that did everything together. It’s hard to tell what the boy thought, but to J, he is a “friend”. It made her day at the playground complete. She even wanted to be in the frame when the boy’s father tried to take a photo of his son. She posed next to him. How embarassing! But kids don’t live with protocols and social ettiquettes. It is only when we tell them “not to do this because it is not nice” and society tells them “not to do this because it is not right” that kids fall into a mould. If J has her way, there will be nothing embarassing but just pure natural. 100% natural.
The day had to end and the only thing left was to drag J from the playground with the enticement of the arcade. She agreed even though she showed some reluctance. I was already at the exit when I found she stood there looking around. She turned to me and asked, “Where is boy-boy?” Before I could say anything, she answered, “Boy-boy has to go home. It is dark already. It is night time, lor.” She caught up, left the play area, sat down and wore her shoes. She wanted to head straight to the arcade even though we insisted a detour to the toilet. She left all disappointment of leaving the playground, not having a chance to say goodbye to “boy-boy”, and moved on to the next thing that will bring her fun like nothing ever happened. She remembered all that happened at the playground, of course, but the future must have been more exciting. If she remained this way and has her way, life will have no disappointments, because there will always be something new and exciting to look forward to.
What if we all don’t grow up but stay as kids?
There will be nothing but pure fun and joy, and there will be no grudges except short-term disagreements, where everyone will be friends with everyone because they react naturally without inhibition of protocols, and life will have no disappointments because the next moment will be just as exciting, if not more.
But J will have to lose all these in order to treasure it. And that’s the sad, sad truth we have all grown up to understand.
Sometimes, it has to be the right place and the right time for things to turn into treasures. S found a book I don’t remember having. She showed me and I just put aside what I was reading and started the book I don’t remember buying – a story about a man called Zhuang Zhou.
The rain won’t be coming again anymore. Not today. Maybe tomorrow, but probably not today. It has been a wet couple of days. It even rained three times in a single day a couple of days back – morning, afternoon, evening.
He stood at the balcony observing that the rain had cleared the sky. Lights on buildings seem to be clearer. The rain may have cleared his thoughts too. Or perhaps it is because he could not hold his thoughts. There were too many to concentrate on a particular one.
Problems seem to be trivial on a night like this. They seem to be like specks of light in the dark sky. They are like stars – bright and trying to catch his attention – but it won’t even fill a small corner of the universe when grouped together.
He realized his thoughts are like the stars, and he just stared into the horizon, beyond the outline of the concrete towers littering the skyline. He breathed a heavy sigh and wondered when will it all be over. And then he remembered the story of a wise, wise man told to him long, long ago.
There was this wise, wise man and he sat, and sat, and sat under a tree thinking, and thinking, and thinking. It doesn’t matter whether it rained or snowed, or day turned to night, he sat, and sat, and sat under that tree thinking, and thinking, and thinking. After many, many years, he suddenly found the answer to his problems. It is at that very moment that he felt as if the doors of heaven opened to him, like liberation before him, like chains unbound, like a big, big sweet chocolate cake waiting only to be consumed. But he is a kind, kind man. He wanted to wait for every single being to come to the same realization as him before he enters the door, experiences the liberation, drop the chains and taste the big, big sweet chocolate cake. He is a compassionate man.
He smiled a bit, still standing at the balcony, because he believes that man is a plain, old stupid fool to wait, because we are plain and simply incorrigible. He recalled that day when he burst out laughing on a particular evening at Costa Coffee near his workplace. He had just left work, bought a coffee and sat down outdoors. There were all kinds of people – kids skating with their parents around, evening drawing old aunts and uncles out, songs making people dance in a crowd, dogs taking their owners out on a stroll.
With minimal outdoor seating, people just walked up and took the Costa Coffee outdoor chairs away from his table without asking and sat down without buying a coffee even if it is meant only for paying customers. He saw dogs peeing everywhere and their owners thinking that is just fine because it is not their home. Parents were telling their kids to skate better because they had bought the gears and paid for the classes. He saw a man parked his motorcycle right next to the main entrance of the mall even though parking was not allowed. For a split second, he realized the people around him were like stars – loud and trying to catch the attention of others around – but they won’t even fill a star in the vast expanse of the universe when grouped together.
He laughed. He realized he is one of the people there – one of the fools. Suddenly, he laughed harder. He realized there is a bigger fool – and he is waiting for him.