000032 - no fear

I prefer not to refer to this stage of my life as a crisis of sorts, but rather an epiphany!!

my cousin candy, her husband john and their little 2.5 year old son jarrod came down from canberra to melbourne for a short visit this weekend. i've only ever met jarrod once before and it was last april. the kid is adorable. quite well behaved and always smiles like there's no tomorrow. we went out for dinner and there was this park with a playground next to the restaurant. jarrod, ever the energetic 2.5 year old that he is, dragged me out to the playground before we even finished dinner. the kid has no fear. he ran left & right, climbed ladders that i'm sure aren't exactly safe for 2.5 age level and even to my amazement, traversed acrossed this chain ladder about 1 m off the ground numerous times to get to this slide. his dad made a good point afterwards when i mentioned how much guts the kid has. he said, he has no idea of what fear is or rather he hasn't learnt it.

he falls, he'll know next time to be scared when he tries to climb over that chain ladder again.

if we, as grown ups, had no idea of what it would be like to be hurt or to fail, how many things would be attempt without having fear of doing it in the first place?

by falling down, is the lesson to make us stronger or weaker? are the mistakes we make today going to teach us never to do attempt something again tomorrow or attempt it differently? i've once heard a saying that sometimes you meet the wrong people in your life so that you'll appreciate the right ones. are they really wrong people or are they just different people that you have to appreciate differently?

perhaps the world does seem a bit different from the eyes of a 2.5 year old compared to a 28 year old but there are times, i think, one can view the world in a lot simpler manner rather than be cynical and scared of the unknown.

anyway, my current idol and the guy i look up to most right now is Makoto Shinkai (english link here). he animated a short movie called "hoshi no koe" [voices of a distant star], all by himself!


:: art from "hoshi no koe" [voices of a distant star]