As a parent, I want so much for my children, to move beyond me, to avoid my mistakes, to change the world through them being…

It is Lola’s fifth birthday party today. Her attitudes are changing. She is growing up. I am not sure I am very good at encouraging it, but if there is one thing I hope she holds on to, it is the child’s clear eye:

“Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions.

…

Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn.

The sun glints through the pines and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise.

After that day, we become seekers.”

― Peter Matthiessen

When did you (again) become a seeker, like kids are seekers?

I distinctly remember. I was about 26, living in Japan, standing in an onsen in the mountains. The moon was up, the water was cold; and nothing could have been more perfect.

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