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Originally Posted by Elfin
Standing at the school bus stop with my 6 year old firstborn on the first beautiful warm spring day of the year, and I was in my element. It was unusually quiet and peaceful for that time in the morning and I was just enjoying the moment. But a little voice beside me popped up beside me saying "it's not real mummy" !!!!! I asked him "what isn't?".... At which he held his arms out and looked all around him and said "all of this.. none of it... It's just a dream.. we only wake up when we die.." .... My mind was of course blown away by this statement. I asked him if he had learnt it at school or someone had told him? .. "no" he replied........ "It just is..."
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Interesting. Perhaps what is surprising is not that he is so young to be saying such, but maybe that he is so old. I often wonder if in growing up, we paper over the knowledge we had before birth, with the knowledge and facts that we are taught by the world. We create within us, our model of the "real world" and our model of "our selves", and they take up so much of our attention and time that our mind is far to busy with life to be aware of the knowledge we still hold deep within. Maybe he is telling you what any 3 month old baby knows, but doesn't have the words to express. By the time one does learn the right words, perhaps most are too preoccupied with all the new things to learn from the life experience and have forgotten about it. Most, but perhaps not all.
Children are allowed to use imagination and play "make believe", adults are expected to know what is real and what is not. And so we meet that expectation or at least try to fake it. But how good a job of categorizing we have done is a question that is hard to answer. Personally, I have found I was much too quick to judge when placing things into the not real category, and now I have much left to unlearn.