THE NIGHT BEFORE A FIELD TRIP

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By Mary Rose Hokanson

I always thought that things needed to be new and exciting, excessively grand and ambitious to make me happy. "The night before a field trip" is an analogy I used when I would try to explain this phenomenon to my parents. It was my way of expressing that I wanted that childlike excitement back.

That same excitement, the amusement and wonder for the world around us, is intrinsic to our nature as humans.

Our childhood selves only know how to play and how to enjoy the moment in from of them.

They love everything without meaning to.

They don’t have to tell you “I love you” for you to know.

They love without condition. They love without knowing how, or when, or from where. They love without complexity or pride, without needing to be recognized for it.

This altruism and this love is intrinsic to our very nature before our intellect is even developed enough to name what it is. Before verbal expression or language comprehension, before we can talk or write or read. We love before we even know what to call it or what we’re doing. Before we know what it means. We love before we know how to add and subtract.

Before we know our own name, we know how to love.

Our childhood selves feel the essence of love before it is anything other than a nature. I just think there is something so special about the example of love we have in the way a child lobes everything without meaning to, and without holding back.

But we become so far removed from this nature as we grow up.

Our days are reordered with structure and routine.

We take on more responsibility and pressure to succeed, and there is no longer excitement and play, no longer that childlike love, no longer anything that makes us feel as excited as we used to feel the night before a field trip.

We become slaves to the idea that this is just growing up and that things will never be that exciting again.

But I have found that our hands are never as tied as we think.

We don't have to surrender to the idea of growing up as a detriment, and we definitely don't have to accept that things will never be as magical as they used to be when we were kids. Sometimes in order to find the magic we have to create the magic. When things may not seem exciting or special, we have to make them special.

You have to create good fortune and do good in your world.

You have to be the good.

You tell me that I am naive, you tell me it’s a cruel world and that I just don’t understand that yet.

You tell me you don’t believe people are good.

To that I say, I am good. believe in me.

In my favorite movie, Everything Everywhere All At Once, one of the characters is quoted saying “You tell me it’s a cruel world and we’re all just running around in circles. I know that. I have been on this earth just as many days as you. When I choose to see the good side of things, I am not being naive. It is strategic and nessecary. It is how I learned to survive through everything. I know you see yourself as a fighter, well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight.”

It is choosing kindness and choosing joy that is the answer for the absurdity of life.

Rumi says, when everything around us seems dark, we must be the light.

During the long winter days, when the sun sets at 5 pm and the West Lafayette skies are a slab of grey, it is easy to feel like every day is boring, or every day is the same.

But that's not true.

There is so much joy to be found in the little intricacies and details of intelligent design and order in our lives every day. There is so much gratitude to be had for the beauty in the mundane, the ordinary, the routine of it all.

I remind myself how lucky I am to be here and how much I love to learn. I get to study what I love and I get to work at my dream job as a writer. My brother is always close by if I need him, and my best friend and I get to do everything together.

I could be anywhere in the world and I would choose to be here every time.

It is up to you to see the good in your own life.

The difficulty of losing someone I love completely halted the noise in my life and forced me to sit with the quiet.

Slow down. Get off your phone. Allow the quiet to enter your soul and reorder it.