Today, I retired from work which has been a 46 year toil across multiple episodes. Work, is a different beast to the one I first encountered so long ago. Today, it is an unrecognisable mish-mash of undefined processes, based on collections of weasel words, in an effort to manufacture truth, and all leading to outcomes that are meaningless to everything except the next pay packet or bonus payment.

Does that sounds like an old person? Yes, I know, it’s a system in which I participated. However, this young lady is one of my three grandchildren. Her name is Vivienne who is 16 months old. One of the most eye-opening experiences of having grand children is this incredible joy that you see in their eyes.

Can you see what’s triggered this reaction?

Yep that’s right. Those shiny orbs floating around her are bubbles.

Bubbles!

It’s not just Vivienne. I see this in her younger brother, Sonny, and I first saw this in her older cousin, Hazel. Of course, it’s not just the bubbles. Of course, she feels loved and secure. In the background, her mother is taking the photo, and her father is blowing the bubbles.

Here’s the question I always ask; where does this fascination go. Kids pull things apart not because they’re destructive, but because they’re hungry to discover, and to be part of this world. After all, it must be amazing if it has bubbles in it.

“How does this work?” they say as the pull apart a new toy.

“Why has it stopped moving?” after pulling out the batteries.

“Look,” comes a surprised smile, “I wrote my name”. There on a random piece of paper, are a series of slashes making up a ‘H’, and a back-to-front ‘z’. “That’s my name” she points at her work proudly “Hazel”.

Where does it go? Why does it stop?

I can see it in pictures of me at an early age. You probably see in yourself as well. I can feel it every time I go back to Italy where I was born. I know it’s there somewhere, buried deep in myself and all my close friends.

We bury it deep in an acceptance of adulthood and growing responsibility. It’s where the game becomes about “winning” and no longer “discovery”. But it’s never completely destroyed. We only let in show in safe places.

You know where I have seen that delight exposed freely in adulthood?

What’s the pleasure viewers receive when watching “reality tv”? How we delight and revel in what people do. An adult would never do that. We sneakingly admire their childishness.

Look at the pleasure and the thrill of conspiracy theories. We hyperventilate as we explain their probable structure and their possible construction. “JFK was really killed by the FBI, the CIA, the Mafia, the Army, Marilyn Munroe, etc.” “How could they have ever landed on the moon? It’s a fake.”

Childish thoughts surrounded by bubbles of delight.

And there’s my problem with the world my children live in, and my grandchildren will shape. Childish speculation is the realm of childish endeavours, rather than the beginning of grand thoughts. What Vivienne is discovering is how wonderful the world is, in every one of its details.

The many young people working, and that I have left behind, think that work is about process. It’s about you doing items 10, 11, 12. What happens to one through nine, or 13 onwards, is someone else’s problem.

Martin Luther King had a dream that his children would be judged by the content of their brain, rather than the colour of their skin. Or, to extend the thought, have the freedom to discover the bubbles of delight in their lives.

It’s one of the reasons I keep coming back to this picture, to the wonder of my grandchildren. Can that feeling be re-discovered, or are adults just bound for years characterised as whiny, complaining, backward-looking old farts?

My eldest daughter would call it “living in the moment”. I look again at the picture and think she may be right. It’s a moment captured, it’s a moment that may be difficult to attain ever again.

But, it may be worth trying.