Adults in many ways do have superpowers in the eyes of a child. They have authority. They are allowed to do many of the things a child cannot do: eat candy whenever they want, stay up late, drive cars, and schedule their days at their own leisure. Despite these superpowers, they didn’t seem super to me as a child. Observing adults faszinated and irritated me, as I’m recalling in this blogpost.
Meeting adults as a child happened mostly in public spaces, for instance next to a supermarket. Adults would always rush. They were constantly following a plan, a rope of tightly scheduled actions, which they must have made up themselves.
They would have a quick walk and tensed up muscles going along with that. Their postures showing constant tension in their legs, backs, chests and faces. Their entire bodies would always be slightly tilted forwards, as if they were walking up against some storm. This would allow them to move even quicker. Sometimes they’d have a wrinkled forehead, looking at the ground.
Besides the posture, their eyes were peculiar also. A look into their eyes - if I could catch it - showed that their minds weren’t really all there. They must have been at the next todo item already, or involved in some other matter. They weren’t enjoying themselves either, which seemed odd to me, with all these superpowers. It left my curiosity unstilled, to how this all fitted together.
And then - sometimes - they’d be able to generate a smile, signaling that they were all okay and there was nothing to worry about. But it was a short smile. It was no smile which signaled love and interest. Not a smile which would have the time to sit down and talk. In my experience, interrupting yourself from a heartfelt smile like that so you can move on is a deceit of the heart. The heart wants to shine through, but you don’t have time for that right now.
I couldn’t understand this form of life, this way of life at the time. It didn’t make sense. I guess I felt I would understand later, and that I could become differently.
From today’s standpoint it makes perfect sense.
In the context of Zen, a person who is constantly not in the moment is constantly not there, and therefor misses everything. That person is following an illusion, very possibly based on fear, if you go down to the wire.
In the context of Tai Chi, a person which constantly tenses up their muscles, consciously or not, essentially wastes energy, to temporarily enhance some sort of throughput. The greater potential however lies in conscious relaxation by default, and well thought-out tensing in the right moment.
In the context of general knowledge on emotions and heart matters, a person with a tensed up face and a tensed up life cannot have an open heart. Quite possibly there are unpleasent emotions constantly there, which don’t want to be felt. The tool to go around this is to sit down with intention, and to allow yourself to feel whatever is there. If then you also open your heart, the smile will come on its own. This is the kind of smile, that has the time to sit down and talk…
Today, this knowledge helps me explain my wonders from back then, which I’m sure many other children also feel. One has to be wondering if the future version of yourself seems so different, so tense.
Today, I’d say that my perceptions as a child were true, but they observed a certain way of life. While this way is very common amongst adults, it is not a perequisite for adultery - on the contrary! I’d like to believe that it’s a great quest of all adults to incorporate ease, lightness and consciousness back into their adult lives.