Today is my 34th birthday. In the past I have shared some written reflections on my birthday, and usually my birthday has me thinking about death. I am fun at parties.1
This year I’m not thinking about death, though. I’m caught up in wonder and story, childlike and otherwise.
Last month, two things happened that amplified my sense of wonder, my appreciation of nostalgia, and the stories woven into routine, everyday life.
Mere Life Is Interesting Enough
First, I spent most of the month of September re-reading G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy but via my friend Trevin Wax’s annotated version. I highly recommend you pick up this version, especially if Chesterton intimidates you!
On page 73 of this edition, Chesterton writes this:
…when we are very young children, we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough.
…
Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales—because they find them romantic.
These days my four-year-old daughter Maggie often asks at the dinner table, “Daddy, can you tell me stories about your life when you were younger like me?”
As one who swims in the sweet waters of nostalgia until my heart wrinkles from overexposure, it pains me how difficult it is to come up with an interesting story from my childhood on the spot.
But what I’ve had to remember is what Chesterton says here: Maggie isn’t looking for fantastic tales of my youth, but boring ones.2
Chesterton is, of course, right about how children find the most mundane to be wondrous—but I would go a bit further, even. I think plain tales about mere life can be sufficient even when we are much older than young children.
Realism is romantic when you recognize the wonder of everyday life.
As I get older I’m realizing how easy it is becoming to recapture that sense of childlike wonder. Or at least, it’s becoming easier to want to find wonder in the little things.
I love feeding and watching birds in my backyard more than ever before. Walks around the neighborhood have never been so refreshing. And the simple beauties in my daughters’ facial expressions provide a sense of happiness that I’ve never really felt before.
I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to wonder at it.
Is There Really No Happiness?
On September 10th I had the opportunity to see Porter Robinson in concert here in Nashville. Porter has been one of my favorite artists since about 2014 when I first heard his song “Sea Of Voices” for the first time somewhat randomly as the soundtrack on the NHL 14 video game trailer.3
Porter’s concert was incredible. I paid a little extra to have VIP early access, which allowed me to get the best “seat” in the house, standing in the center at front of the barricade (sorry to the folks behind me attempting to see through my 6’ 4’’ frame).
One of my favorite songs on Porter’s new record, Smile! :D is a song called “Is There Really No Happiness?” in which Porter explores his love for nostalgia, wondering if happiness exists outside of our unrealistic idyllic reflections on the past.
Here are some of the lyrics:
I remember the family PC4
There was snow in the hallways, there was blood on my teeth5
Growing blind to the butterflies around me
Knowing I'd remember it accurately
Like a joke I swear that I wrote
I know I'm not alone and wondering
The vertigo of trying to get close
To who I was before remembering…
Making love to the memory, you'd think
I'd been chasing the dragon, you'd been watching me weep
Saying some things are better left remembered
How's that help me? Well, maybe it's my fault
'Cause I'm so nostalgic
I resonate with the song because I’m deeply nostalgic, and I have been for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I feel ashamed of how much I reflect on the past with rose-colored glasses, but I don’t think it’s all bad. And this song captured a lot of my struggle with loving nostalgia without wanting to always live there.
Porter’s performance of “Is There Really No Happiness” was powerful to me for those reasons.
But the most powerful song of the concert was his live rendition of “Look At The Sky” from his album Nurture. This song details what it feels like to experience creative burnout and wrestle with imposter syndrome—two feelings I have grappled with a lot myself in recent years.
Here are some of those lyrics:
Look at the sky, I'm still here
I'll be alive next year
I can make something good, oh
Something good
Look at the sky, I'm still here
I'll be alive next year
I can make something good, oh
Something goodAre you close?
Shouldn't it come to you naturally?
And everyone knows
You're losing your gift, and it's plain to see
But then something must have changed in me
I don't fear it anymore
Now I'm sure
I'm sure
Porter has said that he writes a lot of his songs with a sort of science fiction city planet in mind—a global mall of sorts—like Coruscant in Star Wars. And his music, whether more electronic or acoustic, has always produced a sense of wonder in me. His music is the kind that, when I listen to it, I just want to be more creative myself. It elicits wonder and creative energy in me.
It’s easy to be cynical or pessimistic about life today—especially in an election year—at least it seems to be based on the widespread popularity of negativity. I know I’ve found myself living in cynicism, especially when my days consisted of monitoring social media chatter all day.
But as rough as certain aspects of life in our world can seem today, I think it’s good for us to recapture what Chesterton says about life being interesting enough for young children.
We shouldn’t need the fantastical to inspire us to awe. The routines and simplicities of everyday life needn’t be drowned out by the incessant occurrence of earth-shaking events that constantly happen on a global scale.
I’m grateful for another year of wonder, and maybe one day soon I’ll be better at remembering the mundane life for which I am so nostalgic and about which my daughter is so curious.
I am neither at parties, nor fun at them.
She has specifically asked that I not tell any more stories about getting hurt, as she felt profoundly sad for me when I told both stories of getting stitches as a child.
I never played this video game (I don’t do hockey games), but it’s an awesome trailer.
An experience that is increasingly uncommon and somewhat to unique to people like Porter and I who grew up in the 90s.
Referring to tracking snow into the house as a kid and losing teeth.
Happy Birthday! I hope your day was filled with things that make you happy.
I do remember wanting my mom and grandma to tell me stories about their school, etc. Not daring escapades ;)