Tomorrow

We're now in Recife, in the northeast of Brazil, where Rita and I are starting an internet-based news channel where kids from the favela are the reporters and the producers.  The youth hostel where we're staying has a swimming pool, which is Helena's greatest joy in this hot and not-very-safe city (in addition to the open sewers that run through both favelas and middle class neighborhoods, it was for quite a good part of the last decade the most violent city in the world), but last week, it rained several days in a row.  She couldn't get into the pool, though any time the rain gave us a break, she would walk by it and look into it.

Helena has understood the words "later" and "tomorrow" for quite some time; Rita insisted on "tomorrow," especially, as a way to show that when Helena goes to sleep at night, she'll be able to get up and play in another 8-10 hours.  It's only been at the side of the swimming pool, however, that "tomorrow" has become a happy word, that we can see the excited anticipation in Helena's eyes as she says "I go swimming tomorrow."

The use of the future tense itself is cool, with its knowledge of time, but I like even more the way that she has learned to hope.  Even when she was little, she seemed to understand that things could get better, that (as I wrote in that blog, now almost two years ago,

 if she is crying and you lay her down on the changing table, she stops crying long before you take her diaper off.  When she suffers from colic, just passing her from one set of hands to another will often quiet her.  Taking her clothes off before a bath, and she begins to smile.  The future begins to take effect before it arrives, if that makes sense.

Now, that hope can become verbal.  The future, and the happiness that it promises (a chance to go swimming!) comes to colonize, or at least to imbue, the present.

My father always used to enjoy planning for a vacation as much as the trip itself: looking at maps and photos and travel guides became a way that the holiday would give pleasure long before the car left our driveway.  I've since learned that that kind of planning can spoil the spontaneous surprises, the detours and unexpected friendships that may be the best part of travel, but I still like to think that way, I like the way that talking about the future, planning for it, can make the present better.  Helena has already started doing that, and it's great fun to be a part of it.

Happy Babies

For anyone who spends time around babies (or at least most babies; clearly, there are loads of exceptions), one of the most striking and wonderful things is their happiness, the contagious innocence of their smiles and giggles.  For someone like me who likes to think philosophically, this joy is wonderful, but it is also a philosophical problem: why?  Why are babies so happy so much of the time, while adults... well, simply, aren't.

There are lots of answers to such a simple question, of course, and I've tried out a bunch of them at different moments in this blog.  But as Helena Iara and I swung in the hammock yesterday, and she grinned at the swinging motion, at the huge lizard gliding across the yard, at the wind in the trees and the sound of my voice, I remembered some of my father's words from when I was a teenager: "The more different things you can enjoy in life, the better chance you have to be happy."

(Contrast with one of my favorite lines from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxication in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."

Sometimes, it's worthwhile to pay attention to one's parents.)

Dad's lecture... well, not so much a lecture, with the disciplinary tone that entails, but really a kind suggestion, came at the height of adolescent pretension, the moment when we show that we're better than other kids because of what we hate.  Country music, parachute pants, pet rocks, hot dogs, heavy metal... honestly, I don't remember what it was that brought on the conversation, but something I knew that I should not like, if I were to appear the sophisticated grown-up I wanted to be.  An American teenager puts a lot of time into learning how to dislike things, so that he can feel as if he is superior, cool, different, the same...

In truth, what what likes is more about identity, about constructing who I think I am and how I want others to see me, than it is about pleasure.  That's why the question, "What kind of music do you like?" is such a fraught one.  It's not really a question about aesthetics, but about whether you're going to be cool enough to be my friend.

Babies, as I told Helena, don't fall into those traps.  They can enjoy the play of light on the leaves without anyone laughing at them for being simple.  They can express their love for their mommies transparently without being accused of being "Mama's boy."  They haven't yet learned that enjoyment is a complex system of social controls.  They just enjoy.