Weaving History from Stories (Part 1).

The Mind of a Child as a Substrate.

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Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

An invitation and a promise.

I stimulate an unusual sight. A galaxy of stars that remain visible to the eyes in the daylight skies. A Lewisainne landscape that many a Alices' curiosity can't escape. They are Aslain roars that cause the hinges of cupboards to shudder. They awaken wonder and birth a new era for those who shall be kings and queens of a beckoning Narnia.

In the words of my ancestor, I bid you children come in—higher up, further in. You who are never weary; there's so much to see, and much more to discover for eternities. The High King beckons—higher up, further in!

Children...

The mind of a child is an entity whose sense of wonder is easily triggered. Children are explorers who wander across the landscape of life with the inclination to perpetually discover. Their consciousness is an ever-expanding frontier, very much like our universe—growing in leaps and bounds. Being a child is not judged by having not spent enough time around. Rather, it is knowing that more exists ahead than in the time one has spent.

My definition suggests time-independence (of sorts), and time will be an elemental framework in this discourse. The unacknowledged enemy of a non-child is time, for he is always thinking he has less and less of it left. A child acknowledges time neither as a friend nor an enemy, but as a playground. The child wakes up to play, and he sleeps to play another day. For the child, the cycles of time are like the wheels of a merry-go-round: they go around, only to make the child merry. Where a non-child sees a repetition of activities, a child is actually engaged in the reinforcement of pathways of internal and eternal bliss.

A child's play is not frivolity or purposeless frolicking. A non-child sees it as such, but the child knows that he is traveling worlds. In fact, the non-child is stuck, but the child is not. In the long run, we will see that the child has been to more places than the non-child has ever been.

What about growth? I’m sure you would like to know. The role that growth plays must be put in the proper perspective for the essence and gravity of what it means to be a child to be properly perceived. One can either grow up or grow old, and hardly can one do both (mind you, I do not speak of physical anatomy in this writing). While these two may sound similar, they are by no means identical. Growing up entails being on a journey, not remaining static and certainly not regressing. Growing up is approaching a peak with no intention of being defined by it—to become a climber, not the peak. From a child's perspective, he or she does not mind climbing again and again; remember that a child is always at play. They may climb the same hill on so many days, yet come away each time with a different game. I believe this is the case because children have so much internal space, and exploring (not necessarily filling) this space is their life's aim. When it comes to children, what is without is merely a tool for traversing worlds within.

However, to grow old is to live only to scale the peak. With energy waning, the old fellow is just about done with it. He certainly cannot be bothered with new things; after all, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Staying with the allegory of climbing, to grow old is to react to what the mountain says. The mountain says you are weak, so you set your heart on conquest to prove your might over it. With the mountain beneath your feet, you still feel empty and weary—you've torn at your inner fabric and only ended up shrinking within. If you want to know how people grow old, this is the secret: they fight the mountain rather than play with it; they take it as an enemy instead of a playmate. Two people may listen to a mountain but differ in what they hear it say. The child sees an invitation to play; the non-child sees a challenger that must be held at bay. Conflict wears anyone out; play, on the other hand, is the path to perpetual renewal.

The architype of a child is often the object and/or target of stories. Stories, be they real or mythical, possess the unique ability to embed the essence of humanity and fundamental life lessons—the value of virtues and the villainy of vices—in a way that is both engaging and effective. The mind of a child, being what it is, does little to distinguish between the real and the unreal. As long as the story is painted in vivid strokes and evokes strong feelings, the message it conveys becomes sealed in the young hearts that hear it. This points to the fundamental architecture of the heart: it only knows what it feels. Feelings in this context capture the spectrum of impulses with which the heart responds to anything it comes into contact with. Stories exploit the ability of the mind of a child to explore vast swathes of different realities because they have not been screened by experiences. I thus put it to you that innocence is not the lack of experience but the purity of consciousness. Innocence is the ability to hear primal rhythms where otherwise they could have been drowned out by a cacophony. It is the state of the eyes being still single; hence, the whole body is full of light. This transparency of the consciousness primarily manifests as the plasticity of the mind.

The mind of a child knows no guile (the child is by no means a saint; albeit his conscience has not been twisted out of shape by the world's wily ways). Some may call this predisposition to sincerity naivety, steeped in gullibility, or, to stretch it to an extreme, fragility. However, there is nothing as in touch with the pristine simplicity of original reality as this fascinating outlook on things. There is nothing so resilient, nothing so well set in nature's ambience, than this symphony from a heart untamed and untuned (mind you, not out-of-tune), yet produces music so true.

To maintain this flexibility and freedom is to remain a child {- an Alice perpetually in Wonderland or a Peter Pan choosing never to leave Dreamland}. In so many cases, a person who is said to grow old is one who has settled for one version of reality—usually a rickety one—and they call it being realistic or being mature. True maturity is an ever-expanding consciousness. It is certainly not a fixed, frozen, and unreflexive state of perpetual calcification of one's approach to reality. It is fine-tuning one's senses to be able to identify endless possibilities. There is an infinitude of possibilities that the divine opens up to us. However, it is the humility and wonder-inspired exploration exhibited only by the open and wild imagination of a child that gets to see it. As spoken so truly by George McDonald - He can be revealed only to the child; perfectly, to the pure child only. All the discipline of the world is to make men children, that God may be revealed to them.

Conclusion - Days of Future Past.

All children are dreamers; a dreamer is one who sees, not one who sleeps (get it?). In this context, seeing isn't done merely with the eyes but with the heart. This form of sight is timeless and essentially limitless. This is what informs the inquisitiveness of children. It is wonder rather than knowledge that drives them. The wisdom thus derived goes far beyond what many call smartness. It however aids fluidity of essence and an uncanny oneness with existence that spontaneously uncovers insights far exceeding anything that can be revealed by natural light. It is the sort of wisdom that has a sublime transcendence over experience. This is the ultimate power of stories—their dream value. If a story doesn't make you dream, then I doubt it is worth telling...

All children grow up. But some, the wild ones, the ones with the light in their eye escape...

- Wendy (2020)

See you around…

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