The Swing and the Sky: Why We Unlearn the Sense of Wonder

As children, we knew the feeling of deep connectedness without any meditation – about waking up amidst the noise of everyday life.

There are memories that do not feel like classic memories at all. They resemble a lasting feeling left behind somewhere deep within us. When I look back at my own childhood today, I do not see a specific major event or a spectacular celebration first. I see a swing. And I see sky. So much sky. With clouds and without, in the most diverse forms and variations.

As a child, I used to swing for hours. Literally for hours. So long that my mother probably thought I would never return to earth of my own free will. With every single sway, I moved higher and higher, toward the horizon. And while I floated up there, I sang. Sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly. Sometimes I invented my very own melodies, and sometimes I repeated the same lines for hours. Today, I no longer remember exactly which songs they were. But I remember precisely how it felt: free, lighthearted, and absolutely limitless.

Back then, on that swing, I had a deep sense of being unconditionally connected to everything around me. With the fresh wind, the passing clouds, the old trees, the birds, and the endless sky. I was part of something that was so much larger than myself. Of course, as a child, I would never have phrased it so philosophically with the words I had back then. I probably would have simply said: It feels nice. But today, many years later, I believe that this was the very core of it. This completely natural state. This pure oneness with life.

At some point, we all stop swinging. And not just in a literal sense. We gradually stop wasting what we perceive as time. We stop simply looking into the sky and watching the clouds. We unlearn how to just be. Life becomes fuller from year to year, and so does the calendar. Responsibilities pile up, along with obligations and endless appointments. And very slowly, almost unnoticed, we unlearn a quality that was once entirely natural to us: pure presence in the moment.

Sometimes I wonder if we, as adults, in our constant search through life, are striving for something that we already possessed as children and then forgot. Most of the time, we are not looking for more success, additional recognition, or perfection. We are searching for that one, familiar feeling of connectedness. For that quiet knowledge: I am a valuable part of something larger. Back then, I did not need a guided meditation for that, nor clever self-help books, rigid concepts, or rational explanations. A simple swing in the garden was more than enough.

Perhaps that is why good stories and literary parables touch me so deeply to this day. Because, for a brief moment, they can bring us right back there. To that childlike wonder, that radical openness, and the question: What if the world is actually much bigger than I think today? As a child, this question was a matter of course. Today, as adults, we have to actively and sometimes painstakingly remind ourselves of it.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to that little girl on the swing for just a brief moment. Not to change anything about her future, but just to watch her quietly for a while. How she sings, how she laughs lightheartedly, and how she swings higher and higher. I would love to observe how she does not doubt for a single second that everything in this world is connected. Perhaps she would say something important to my present adult world. Perhaps not. She would probably just continue to swing without a word. ;-)

And by doing exactly that, she would show me what I forget so often in the noise of everyday life: That true connectedness does not have to be painstakingly found on the outside first. That it has been there all along. Buried deep beneath all the heavy thoughts, the daily noise, and all the plans for the future. It waits there very quietly. Like a familiar, almost forgotten song from childhood days.

When was the last time you felt completely connected – with yourself, with nature, or with the flow of life?

Did you enjoy this trip to the swing?
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