The other day, I posted about how children start life as red cards: creative, playful, connected.
But as we age and learn to fit in and be successful, we start to collect black cards: logical, organized, systematic.
The question I posed was: Who are we really?
Here’s a link to the blog post.
Driving home from a speech the other day, only hours after writing that article, I heard Supertramp’s The Logical Song on the radio. It captured exactly what I was saying:
“When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, magical…” (the red cards)“But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible. Logical, responsible, practical…they showed me a world where I could be so dependable, clinical, intellectual, cynical.” (the black cards)
Later in the song, they add…
“We’d like to feel you’re acceptable…respectable, presentable, a vegetable.“
Across the track runs a plea that echoes my question: Please tell me who I am.
Who are we really? The child who sees the world as a beautiful and magical world? Or the person we become over time: responsible, practical, cynical, or a vegetable?
How do we honor both without losing ourselves?
P.S. For copyright reasons, I am not using the actual cover art.