Published on 12, July, 2020
What so called "childish" or innocent pursuits does anyone have?
Myself, I like blowing bubbles. I always have a pot of them in the car, and often take them out when I go on a walk and sit down and blow them and watch them float gently over the landscape or historic site. I do find it very therapeutic and suppose it is a sort of stimming although it is usually done when I am calm, although sometimes I must say when I have had a difficult few minutes I get the urge to blow them.
I also love watching old children's television programmes from when I was young. Catweazel, the Gerry Anderson puppet series (Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds and even Four Feather Falls), Follyfoot (I fell in love with Dora as a teenager!).
And I am never far from my recorder. Although I stopped being taught at the age of 11, I carried on with playing it and even though my music reading is below very basic I can pick out a tune and change the key to suit very easily.
So does anyone else have these sort of so called childish pursuits and what are they?
Hope said:I am particularly inspired by Diogenes the Cynic and the Cynic school in general (cynicism has a bad rap these days, but the original cynics were honest free thinkers who were alienated by the falsehoods and restraints of the status quo). They were often loners as well.
I am particularly inspired by Diogenes the Cynic and the Cynic school in general (cynicism has a bad rap these days, but the original cynics were honest free thinkers who were alienated by the falsehoods and restraints of the status quo). They were often loners as well.
Yes, Diogenes. This ties in again with the 'return to nature' theme that infuses the art and thinking of the Romantics and the Transcendentalists. Let's look, too, to Blake, Keats, Shelley, Goethe, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The latter's 'Confessions' are very suggestive of an Aspie nature!
I love the early Wordsworth (before he became so insufferably conservative!), and Whitman. Thoreau was the one, though, that I really tuned into. Hugely influential with the hippie movement in the '60s, he advocated the virtues of the simple, materially unencumbered life (try 'Walden' if you haven't already). Thinkers and writers like Thoreau, Emerson and Whitman took a lot from Eastern philosophies and teachings, particularly Buddhism (the only religion that I find remotely congenial). Diogenes saw, in his day, that the artificial preoccupations of society were incompatible with happiness, and advocated a return to a simpler lifestyle. He tried to demonstrate that wisdom and happiness belong to the man who is independent of society and that civilization is regressive. I agree wholeheartedly! I don't believe that his 'cynicism' was at all misplaced.