When I stopped being a kid, Pt. 2
(242/365)
I brought two books from Monterrey: one from Julio Cortázar (Historias de cronopios y famas), the other one by Borges (El Aleph). I wrote about both of them in (123/365) When I stopped being a kid, Pt. 1.
The cool thing about the Borges one? That inside I found a very cute bookmark from three-year old Gabriel:
Today, while reading El Aleph at the park with the kids, I remembered this past post (123/365) and I thought about other moments that feel—now in retrospect—experienced by a different person—me as a child—moments where I couldn’t have imagined not being other than a happy kid.
Then, Gerardo Cañamar (who has been my friend since junior high and now doubles as Astrolab’s CEO and Gabriel’s godfather) sent a story via Instagram to a small group of childhood friends about the release of a video game that came out in 1998 just in time for our Christmas vacations: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a Nintendo 64 game.
Every two or three years, my sister—four years younger than me—shares with me what she remembers of those Christmas vacations: me playing the game eight hours a day. She was ten at that time, the same age as Gabriel is today. She remembers it as one of the vacations we spent together.
That next summer, I began doing social work projects in rural Mexico and didn’t stop for the next ten years.
Surprisingly, I don’t have that many specific memories of my surroundings from those two weeks. The game was such a breakthrough in gaming, storytelling, character development, visuals, and music, that I got absorbed into it and finished it just before my last semester in middle school started.
My post is not about the video game. Instead, it is a reflection of how sometimes we fall into the illusion of thinking that life is still, that relationships are set in stone, and that WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is), as the late Danny Kahneman used to say.
Our brain cherishes certainty, but life—the combination of nature, time, human decision-making, and chance, etc—is not predictable, except a couple of things like death, taxes, and… [fill in the blank].
For us who have been blessed with kids, think about what this means for you, for them, and for your time with them.
Perhaps we can help design moments—especially moments together—they’ll cherish so that they build resilience and can retrieve the memories when life throws shit at them.
#day242