Forever a Child – A Personal Perspective

People sometimes call me a smartass. I don’t get it – after all, I’m often actually right.

No, joking aside: Compared to real experts in their fields, I’m just an ordinary clueless person.

My biggest “flaw” is also my strongest muscle: my brain.

I forget nothing. Unfortunately. It soaks up everything like a sponge – conversations, impressions, throwaway remarks.

Sometimes I remember dialogues from the next table in a restaurant without consciously listening.

Appointments, statements, encounters – everything stays stored.

And sometimes that’s awful, for example, when someone tells me a story thinking I’ve never heard it before –

and I know exactly they told me the same story three years ago, only back then in a completely different version.

I believe many people have lost the ability to truly listen.

And also to remember to whom they told what.

Many things are just a pass-through – the main thing is to talk, to tell.

Add social media and a network of hundreds of acquaintances:

Stories get spread to countless corners.

Why? Out of a need to share? Hoping for an answer that blows them away?

I don’t know. I can’t judge – and I don’t want to.

My brain is a sponge, and there’s hardly anything that doesn’t interest me.

What I don’t understand: when someone says, “I only read biographies” or “Only self-help books” or “Only this or that.”

I like everything – because everything has pros and cons.

Despite my age – and although I should long know what I prefer – I never stop being interested in everything.

I read Isaac Asimov (who was far ahead of his time – what was once called science fiction is often reality today),

a book by a spiritual teacher, a biography,

but also a Donald Duck comic or a romance novel.

Yes, Donald Duck – why not?

Is that only for children?

Children have no prejudice, no past, no conditions, no anger.

So maybe I’m just a big child.

The same goes for movies or series:

I watch almost everything – even reality trash TV.

Why not? That can be educational too – if only as proof that society is going downhill.

The behavior of some participants is so absurd it feels like a time warp:

a decadent Bacchus festival or Sodom and Gomorrah in modern form.

And even that is information.

Just like business talks on YouTube. Everything has its learning effect.

The location has changed:

It used to be the sandbox; today it’s books, TV, and the world out there.

I think: you can learn something from everything.

I don’t understand why many people are so one-sided.

Maybe because they want to repair themselves?

Do they only read self-help books to understand or process their past?

Possible. Some psychologists choose their profession to heal themselves.

Is it therefore, in some cases, more one-sided because they want to understand the world,

but doesn’t the world consist of good and evil, day and night, ebb and flow, caterpillar and butterfly,

man and woman, yin and yang –

wouldn’t it then be important to absorb everything there is to absorb?

So: smartassing? No.

More like a child – soaking up everything, questioning everything.

Maybe we should be more like children again:

when skin color, religion, gender, wealth, or appearance didn’t matter.

When other values counted.

Which side is better – that of a child or that of an adult with self-imposed boundaries?

I know my answer.

But this – as always – is just my opinion.