Dr Ignaz Semmelweiss was thrown into a mental asylum for telling Doctors to wash their hands.
Now, children in primary school sing: “Coughs and sneezes spread diseases”.
A computer used to be an expensive, sophisticated artifice the size of a house, with the power of a basic calculator and maintained by an army of grown-ups.
Now, parents toss mini-sized supercomputers (iPads) at their toddlers just to shut them up.
Neurosurgery used to be the serious domain of highly skilled multi-lettered Consultants wielding expensively equipped surgical theatres.
Today, or maybe tomorrow, it will simply be a level in a videogame played by millions of kids around the world, where the movement of the players guides nanorobots who carry out the real-world surgery.
Today’s “serious grown-up issues” are tomorrow’s Child’s play.
Joy, wonder, play and creativity always win against fearfully hiding behind the excuse of “being a Grown-Up”.
We’re just kids (to borrow from Patti Smith). Kids with the privilege of taking on and engaging with more opportunities for impact (aka “responsibilities”).
Child’s Play endures and supplants everything that isn’t Child’s Play.
So skip the misery bit of “being a responsible Grown-Up”…and dare to use your talents and gifts to create art that impacts the world…but feels like Child’s Play to you.
Image: Gapingvoid