A Wonder-Full Life

In college we used to say, “All babies are born stoned; then the world beats it out of them.” We were probably just paraphrasing our music. Pink Floyd said it metaphorically, “All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.”

My standard operating system was developed at home and refined at school. Don’t run in the house. Use your indoor voice. Do your work before you play. Color inside the lines. Sit up straight. Be polite. Each basic command was entered in my head. If I do these things, I will operate properly. If I do not, I will crash in the time-out corner. Not that we had a time-out corner back then.

But hey, I also learned about family, and fairy tales, and heroes, and angels, and creativity, and planets, and fairness, and inventors, and imagination, and artists, and poetry, and ideals, and so many awe-inspiring and wonder-full things. These concepts captured my soul. They are my hidden system files—my read-only, undeletable files. They underpin my world view.

I’m bombarded daily with data that challenges that view. But she’s supposed to be your friend. Data. He had that information. I gave it to him. Data. You’re too tall. You intimidate people. Data. There have been more bombings in London. Data. Why not come up to my place and see my etchings? Data miner. Still data. That’s all it is—data. I don’t have unlimited memory, so unnecessary negative data doesn’t get saved—period.

It took me a while to figure out that last part. For a while, I tied myself in knots, trying to decide whether I was a fool. . . . I can see that as a species we do some despicable things. What if the world is the awful place that keeps presenting itself to me? Bits and bytes of negative data chipped away at my world view and therefore at me. My Winnie-the-Pooh self was caught quoting Eeyore. “Pathetic, that’s what it is. Pathetic.”

But try as I might, I couldn’t—still can’t—give up on the world. I still believe in family, and fairy tales, and heroes, and angels, and creativity, and planets, and fairness, and inventors, and imagination, and artists, and poetry, and ideals, and so many awe-inspiring and wonder-full things. They were written on my soul as a child. I can’t delete them, lucky for me. I might have wanted to once, but not now, not again, not ever.

Duncan says that the world needs incurable idealists like us. He says we balance out the hardcore cynics. It has to do with joy, and hope, and possibility.

I like the thought of providing balance. So I hold tight to my world view, even though I know that people can do despicable things. I don’t want despicable people choosing my world for me.

My world needs people who believe in it as much as I need people who believe in me.

It’s a wonder-full life being Winnie-the-Pooh. It comes with an awe-inspiring view.

—me strauss Letting me be