Finding Neverland
When I was little I wanted to be an inventor, a pilot, and a journalist.
I wanted to travel and take pictures. I can remember imagining up new design concepts for a plunger, making perfume for my mom, and mixing (perhaps dangerous) chemicals together to produce a new ant pesticide. Toothpaste was the core ingredient of almost all of my concoctions on account of what I imagined it did to my mouth and teeth. Surely no insect could survive the potency of Colgate. Mostly the ants would scurry to and fro and struggle, helpless to escape the minty paste I applied over their dugout. To this day I’m not sure I managed to do much more than test the limit of my body’s immune system and my tolerance for ant venom.
I distinctly remember, though, the restlessness I would feel.
I would be inside doing chores or homework, and would long to be out in the backyard mixing things and tearing apart old toys. The world was my lab and my only limits were my imagination and the ingredients and tools I could “borrow” without my parents raising an alarm.
I wish we still thought this way.
I can look back at my absolute fascination with the world- its people, machines, and environments- and still feel the pangs of hunger from my insatiable curiosity. I miss this feeling. I think we settle for comfortable. I don’t know if it is a series of disappointments or the natural maturing of psyche, but we lose our whimsy.
We begin to rationalize that Neverland never was, and the dreams of our childhood were just that- dreams.
The journey starts in the past.
I wish I could see my 8 year old self, and hear him talk of his passions and dreams with no regard for what society deemed appropriate, and I wish I could lean in closely and whisper to him, “Go. Be that. You have what it takes.”
It is this intersection of talent, passion, whimsy and risk that makes people truly great. And it isn’t about accomplishments. Not one bit. It is about the feeling of restlessness. It is about the stirring in our hearts as we discover those things that we were made to do.
