The world is built by adults for adults. Children don’t really fit. Until they reach a size where they can move about comfortably in the adult-sized world, every day of a child’s life is an adventure…and all adventures are, by definition, a fusion of joy and horror.
We forget what it’s like. We forget the intensity with which children experience the world. Adults live more muted lives. But children, they live in a world of out-sized peril and adventure, a world of astonishing risk and never-ending romance. Children routinely experience thrills and terrors that would render an adult incapable of speech or motion.
Even their emotions are more powerful. A child’s joy is so bright and intense it can set off a chain reaction, creating cascades of omni-directional joy irradiating everybody within the blast radius. A child’s anxieties are so potent, so powerfully daunting that they stagger the heart.
The transition from childhood to adulthood is so gradual that we don’t realize when we’ve passed out of the one and into the other. As an adult, we understand that happiness and apprehension come and go, come and go. For children, every moment of joy lasts absolutely forever, and the dread pull of anxiety never ever ever ends.
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