SOMEONE ELSE’S WINDOWS: Finding the lost child in us

MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews / 26 January) – Work, marriage and other reasons may have brought us to places far from where we were born and grew up. But at some point in this ephemeral life of ours we long to return to that spot on Earth and relive, if only for a while, those days when we were young, wild, free – and often stupid.

For sure, we couldn’t recreate those carefree episodes, we simply wish to savor the memories that brought smiles and laughter and tied us to our roots. It’s just that the echo of yesterday’s half-innocent mischief seems to ring louder as age advances, as if to rekindle the fire that burned bright in the hearth of youth. And, hopeless romantics that we are, we often wish that the winds of nostalgia would blow life into its dying embers.

No, it’s not those moments of timid passion and naughty escapades, from which we draw both amusement and embarrassment, that we want to relive. Rather, we simply yearn to savor again and again the things that sated our childhood senses – the rainbow behind the hills, the dewdrops on the grass, the music of birds, the fireflies lighting up the trees, the fish beneath clear ponds and streams.

There will always be this child in us who loves to gather shells and pebbles on the shore, climb guava and cherry trees, mold objects from mud, dance in the rain, and run in the meadows.

It had always been the happiness of pursuit until society’s expectations and standards of “success” changed that to pursuit of happiness. We were forced to embrace something that made us indifferent to the sounds and colors of the world. 

We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun, so goes a song by Terry Jacks. But unlike the song’s lamentation, we refuse to accept that those seasons are all gone along with the wine and the songs; they are simply tucked away in a corner of our mind, ready to be reborn.

So, go out there and indulge that child within you. Run. Laugh. Love. But above all, live.

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. H. Marcos C. Mordeno can be reached at hmcmordeno@gmail.com.)