“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.”
Rabindranath Tagore
It’s a rare sunny day in Canada so I go for a walk to the playground with my youngest daughter. My eldest is at daycare, today is just the two of us.
I see a dad leaning cautiously over his son who is learning to ride a bike and wonder what made him decide to have a child. Was it a chance to re-live the magic of childhood or was he pressured into it as a societal norm after hitting a certain age? Was it to heal his own wounds of childhood and do better than he had? Was it happenstance or was it a biological urge to procreate? I wonder what made him – and all the other parents I see pushing prams and chasing their toddlers – decide to have a child.
For me, wanting to be a mother came suddenly and intensely. After many years of being unfazed by children, one day I woke up and knew I wanted one of my own. Now I have two little girls and their presence has equally complicated and enriched my life. When I see my daughters laughing together, I feel my heart swell in my chest. How crazy it is that they exist, that they are here. I look at these two adorable people and think they are just random kids to someone on the street, but to me, they are everything. I want to do everything I can to protect them. I want, like all parents, for my kids to be happy.
So, I do everything I can do to create joyful experiences that will carry on in their hearts long after I’m gone. Being their mum and witnessing them grow allows me to re-live the joy of childhood. But I can’t help but notice that the world is so different now. I can’t re-create what I had. The life I thought I’d return to in Vancouver is gone. I can see now how older people feel threatened and scared when life is no longer the way it was. Change can be disorienting and frightening, especially when it’s the very fabric of our existence. For me, it’s the destruction to our planet and the addiction to “smart” phones that I find the hardest. I feel sorry for nature for trying so hard to live in an increasingly polluted and fragmented world. I feel sorry for adolescent brains trying to form while having their attention stolen repeatedly by social media giants. I also feel sorry for all the parents who are trying to give their kids the best childhood when life is becoming more and more unaffordable.
It’s clear to me that my children are going to encounter a very different experience as a human on this planet. I can’t even imagine the life of my children’s children. Will we even be able to sustain ourselves as a species for that long? How can I prepare my kids for this new world? How can I remain hopeful despite my fear and pain for where we’re heading? How can I ensure life will still be habitable?
As a kid, summer in Canada used to smell like freshly mowed lawns and the constant shhhh-tik-tik-tik sound of sprinklers. It was walking to the candy store with a few dollars of allowance money and playing kick the can in neighbourhood cul-de-sacs with a bunch of other kids. It used to be a house with a backyard big enough for a swing set and seemingly limitless open spaces, fields, and forests. It used to be a life without regularly seeing someone passed out from overdosing on crack or sniffing solvents, or where there was no such thing as a ‘tent city’. It used to be a life without every single person glued to their phone. There was abundant, non-threatened nature. There was community. My mother told me when my sister and I were babies she worried how life would be when we got older, just as I worry about the future for my own children. Perhaps this is a normal thing that happens as a new parent. Every generation has something to complain about, something to compare it to. Maybe we all inevitably become that old person telling everyone that things were better back in the day. But something tells me this is different.
Childhood, at least for me, felt free and vast and expansive. Now, especially since the introduction of social media, it seems childhood in and of itself is shrinking and threatened. When I see my daughter playing at the river, I feel like I’m in that part of ‘Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind’ when a memory starts to be taken away one aspect at a time. But in this case, it’s like nature is slowly disappearing, one tree at a time. I try my best not to focus on it too much. I try to think of the little things I can do to preserve our planet, hoping that others will feel as motivated for the same. I will try to find and befriend other parents who feel the same about the impact of social media and yearn to protect our kids to be kids for as long as possible. I will try my best to put my addictive phone down for blocks of time and model real human interaction with our fellow human beings.
I’ll hope for a world less polarised, and the end of all wars, everywhere. I’ll treasure nature and share my love for it so my children will also learn to fight for those who have no voice, the birds, trees, rivers, and butterflies. For this is all of our home. What we do now will affect not only us, but all the people who are born after us. I hope we can make it a good place to live. Is it naive to hope for this?
Art Therapy with Kimberly 