Jan 6th, 2022 Thursday Sunny but very cold
Over the holiday break, we took our kitty with us on a trip to visit our family, and we stayed in a pet-friendly hotel. As a strictly indoor cat, Lyn has almost never left the house except for going to the vet, so naturally she was nervous for a while. Nevertheless, once we settled into the hotel, Lyn calmed down, and started exploring the new environment. Within minutes, she discovered her favorite spot of any household – the sink! Needless to say, she had great fun jumping onto the sink and demanding tap water.
This trip seemed to have given our kitty new ideas – there are other sinks in the world! Evidently, she decided to look for more, even after we returned home. We have a sink in the kitchen, but the kitchen counter is too high for Lyn to access so we were never worried. However, she somehow managed to find her way (where there is a will, there is a way): dining room chair, dining table, a wide “gorge” between the table and the kitchen counter, and there it is! A new sink that she has never tried! As soon as the dishes in the sink were cleared away, she had her first taste of kitchen tap water LOL
Lyn just turned seventeen years old, so in cat age she is certainly a grandma. Despite that, she seemed to approach the world with child-like curiosity, as long as she feels safe to explore. In that sense, I feel that she never grows old. Why can not humans be like that? Why can not humans always view the world as an interesting playground to explore, with endless things to learn?
Or can we?
As humans grow up, we learn millions of things, at school, at home, with parents, with friends. We learn through many years of formal education, until we eventually graduate and get a job, and then maybe own a home. We call that “settling down” or “entering adulthood”. All of a sudden, it seems that we have gotten everything in this world figured out – not quite, but what seems worth learning is already learned, and whatever challenge is not solved is probably not solvable, at least not by us. All of a sudden, the world has lost its pixie dust, and life falls into a mundane groove. Every day starts to feel like every other day. And we repine, “we are getting old!”
It does not have to be like this.
It is said that cats only have seven minutes of memory. After seven minutes, the world seems fresh again. As a result, they can enjoy playing the same game over and over again. And they are happy and content. If we humans can cherish this mindset and curiosity about the world, then we never truly become old. On the other hand, the moment we have lost that passion of exploring and learning about the world, we are already old, regardless of how many years we have spent on the earth.
I remember a hiking trip with friends in college. When we finally climbed onto the top of a mountain, a girl exclaimed, “how wonderful!” Upon hearing that, a five-year-old boy commented with a snark, “what is noteworthy about this? I’ve seen mountains before!”
I pity the boy. At the age of five, he already stopped approaching the world with an open heart, and he refused to be touched or inspired by anything new. If he lives like that, he will find that the world confirms his view, that there is nothing worth learning and exploring besides what he already knows, and he will miss all the wonders in front of his eyes.
Pray that we never become like that. Pray that we always have the child’s heart somewhere in us.