Childhood Wonder

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  • E603A: Fall Semester
    • Writings
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      • Required
        • Hypermedia
        • College Arch.
        • College Gothic
        • Modernism
        • Universities
        • The Grotesque
        • Idealism
        • Unity
        • Child's Wonder
      • Optional
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  • E603B: Spring Semester

I figured that there would be no better time to write a DB on childhood wonder than when I was at home. To tell the truth, I had planned on starting it much earlier in the week, but once I was home, doing school work seemed so distant, and I put it off repeatedly.

But, I guess, now some of that veneer has worn off. I had been looking forward to coming home for several weeks, not only to escape all of the school work, but to return to the place where I was "young and easy" (Thomas 707). When i thought about home I saw images of my "golden heydays" and thought of carefree times. In my mind, I had begun to romanticize my childhood, and I couldn't wait to go back to those "good old days."

On the drive home, when I was nearing Texarkana, I felt the same feelings that Stuart felt when reading Wordsworth. As I passed the "rural objects and natural scenery" that I had grown up with, I felt recharged (Stuart 695). For the first few days back, I felt wonderful and wished i could stay home forever. I had no desire to go back to college, back to the rat race. That is, until I started to see through the golden veneer I had applied to my childhood home. Suddenly I was growing more and more wary of Texarkana. I picked up the newspaper to see I special four page section on "mudding," in people I saw a small-mindedness that I had not recognized before, and generally the place of my childhood revealed itself as rather "rinky-dink."

So, now I wasn't really feeling so great abut either aspect of my life. College wasn't the greatest and neither was home. I didn't seem to be happy either place. It seems others have felt the same way; they have discovered that "the first freshness of youthful enjoyment of life was not lasting" (Stuart 695). Was I already jaded to the world at 19? But maybe it was examining my happiness that brought about it's demise. Stuart says that when you "ask yourself if you are happy, ... you cease to be" (694). I think that going to college was such a big change in my life, that it forced me to reevaluate my feelings, and through this I convinced myself that I was no loner happy. Whereas, before, I was "inhaling happiness with the air [I would] breathe," by examining myself I began to hold my breath. I was trying so hard to find happiness that I lost it.

These readings have convinced me to worry less, and take life all in stride. Then, "without dwelling on it or thinking about it," happiness will come.