Adulthood is all about chasing childhood joy
I think I have come to the conclusion that our adult lives are spent chasing the pure satisfaction and joy we encountered as children.
“Time speeds up” is a common saying as we grow older. As a child a year felt like FOR-EVER and hence annual events (birthdays, etc) were really special. Yes, as kids we had the monotony of school that is akin to the monotony of a day job, but there was a discovery at every turn.
Then we get to “the real world” where discoveries take place on weekends at predetermined times. The life in life becomes scheduled and antiseptic. At that point in our lives we crave that “it thing” we found endlessly as a kid: riding a bike in an unknown direction, trying a new food for the first time, and meeting someone you would call a friend decades later.
We live in the past. Entertainment knows this. It’s why the entire third and final season of Star Trek: Picard is essentially a ‘getting the band back together’ nostalgia trip. Is that a bad thing? Not at all. Does it make for weaker writing? Absolutely, because they have to shoehorn some ways to get all these people together again.
In watching the latest episode where a certain famous Trek starship was resurrected, I was reminded of this scene from The Next Generation. In this episode the Enterprise crew rescues Scottie and…
