Today’s yellow convertible pulled up beside me in the form of a quote I stumbled across from my idol Mister Rogers. It shines an entirely different light – or at least the same light from a different angle -- on children and “the world of living metaphor” discussed in this morning’s post:
In order to express our sense of reality, we must use some kind of symbol: words or notes or shades of paint or television pictures or sculpted forms. None of those symbols or images can ever completely satisfy us because they can never be any more than what they are – a fragment of a reflection of what we feel reality to be.
That’s why it’s so difficult to communicate honestly, I suppose, and why we find such great truth in the pronouncements of children, who lack the experience to rely on metaphorical conventions. They just put the symbols together as they occur to them, ungrammatically, of course, but often shocking, hilarious, and insightful nonetheless.