‘In our time the destiny of man presents its meaning in
political terms!–THOMAS MANN
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But 0 that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats
After a week spent living in the moment and trying to keep the little guy laughing, not crying, I’m finding it difficult to suddenly switch back to "reality."
Thus, I was happy to find links to Pretty Faces Get Men’s Brains Going: Study at wood s lot
Simply put, if you have to start thinking again, it’s much easier to start thinking about girls than it is to think about Afghanistan, the Florida ballot, or, particularly, the airplane crash in New York that greeted me when I re-encountered the "real world" by turning on the television this morning.
A week taking care of a one-year-old didn’t actually make me think about girls, but it did make me think about what it means to be young again.
And for a short while, I could recapture the wonder of seeing things in a new light when we spent fifteen minutes walking ten feet while picking up and discarding fallen leaves in order to find the "perfect" leaf, perfect, at least, until we decided to drop it ten minutes later because we wanted "up." Nothing’s too precious to let go of in a new moment.
What a wonder this world is when you can see it in new ways, whether itâs from the top of a slide sitting next to a child who finds the descent to earth terrifying, even if it is only five feet away, or from a swing, where the world seems in constant motion.
Up close and personal, the world is a miraculous place if we allow it to be.