It is soft, worn, gentile, comfortable. Its plastic eyes are cracked; its plastic nose feels like a soft pearl. It is loved beyond belief.
It is her teddy bear--it is her lovey. With her teddy bear, she opens up a whole world of imagination-- a world known as childhood.
But as she grows older, she starts to leave it at home sometimes, and doesn't dress it up anymore or take it for walks, and she has become 'too sophisticated' to sleep with it nestled in her arms. She is embarrassed at what other people might say if they see it sitting in the middle of her bed.
And as she grows even older, she shoves it in the back of her closet, covering it up with old sweatshirts and socks. And now it is unwanted, unloved, unappreciated. It is retired. It sits, neglected, and the girl doesn't even think about it anymore. She is too busy with life to care for it again like she once did.
And the teddy bear is forgotten.
And then we realize that childhood doesn't last forever.
At some point in time, you have to grow up. You have to go to school, you have to get good grades, and you have to get into a good college. And then you have to get a good job.
When we grow up, we become obsessed with perfection, obsessed with success, obsessed with the material world. We become obsessed numbers and letters, not vivid colors or stars or animals or flowers. Our imaginations are gone, away, missing.
But just because our imaginations are missing doesn't mean we can't find them.
In my French class, we're reading a book called Le Petit Prince (the Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. This book is about a little prince who leaves his planet in the solar system to visit other planets to find new friends after a bad experience with a flower. Throughout the book, he experiences frustration with adults (les grandes personnes) because all they care about are numbers and serious things. The little prince likes to imagine-- he likes to look at sunsets and stars, flowers and volcanoes.
Once he lands on Earth, he meets a fox who tells him something very important, a saying that I think is beautiful:
"On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."
(You can only see clearly with the heart. What is truly important is invisible to the eyes.)
So who cares if we're not 'children' anymore? Go wherever your heart takes you to find your missing imagination, and if that's to a dusty stuffed teddy bear that's quite possibly flattened under a pile of clothes, then so be it.
But as she grows older, she starts to leave it at home sometimes, and doesn't dress it up anymore or take it for walks, and she has become 'too sophisticated' to sleep with it nestled in her arms. She is embarrassed at what other people might say if they see it sitting in the middle of her bed.
And as she grows even older, she shoves it in the back of her closet, covering it up with old sweatshirts and socks. And now it is unwanted, unloved, unappreciated. It is retired. It sits, neglected, and the girl doesn't even think about it anymore. She is too busy with life to care for it again like she once did.
And the teddy bear is forgotten.
And then we realize that childhood doesn't last forever.
At some point in time, you have to grow up. You have to go to school, you have to get good grades, and you have to get into a good college. And then you have to get a good job.
When we grow up, we become obsessed with perfection, obsessed with success, obsessed with the material world. We become obsessed numbers and letters, not vivid colors or stars or animals or flowers. Our imaginations are gone, away, missing.
But just because our imaginations are missing doesn't mean we can't find them.
In my French class, we're reading a book called Le Petit Prince (the Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. This book is about a little prince who leaves his planet in the solar system to visit other planets to find new friends after a bad experience with a flower. Throughout the book, he experiences frustration with adults (les grandes personnes) because all they care about are numbers and serious things. The little prince likes to imagine-- he likes to look at sunsets and stars, flowers and volcanoes.
Once he lands on Earth, he meets a fox who tells him something very important, a saying that I think is beautiful:
"On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."
(You can only see clearly with the heart. What is truly important is invisible to the eyes.)
So who cares if we're not 'children' anymore? Go wherever your heart takes you to find your missing imagination, and if that's to a dusty stuffed teddy bear that's quite possibly flattened under a pile of clothes, then so be it.
