Website owner: James Miller
How does a young child see the world around him? What goes through his mind? I got a brief glimpse of that today when I was on my noonday walk. As I was walking I suddenly became aware of the great variety of odors and scents that were in the world about me. And I was then immediately reminded of my childhood. For that was what the world was to me when I was a child. Odors and scents. So many different kinds of them. Interesting odors, intriguing odors, mysterious odors. I didn't know where they came from or what they were but they gave color and feeling to life. There were also impressions and sensations coming to me from my other senses, too --- sounds through the ears, images through the eyes --- but I think the most powerful ones were the odors. I never notice odors anymore. It is probably because my mind is always so deep in reflection. But as I was walking today I started thinking. Dogs and many other animals have a very good sense of smell. This must be exactly the way the world appears to them also. Life is just a great variety of odors, sensations and impressions. This along with desires, wants and bodily impulses make up their whole world. They don't think, they just feel life. And I think young children are the same way. As they grow older they start using their ability to reason and start thinking. And then their thoughts and deliberations start crowding out the sensations and impressions coming in to them through their senses (at least it does, I think, for reflective type people). But I wonder if all the reasonings and deliberations that take over the mind are worth as much as the sensations and impressions that they crowd out. The sensations and impressions are gay and colorful and the deliberations are all colorless. Sept 1986
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