pictures of cars and flowers

As children, we play, and think: 'When I am an adult I'll do this all day - and all night if I want'. We imagine ourselves with an adult's resources and freedom to act. We can take the train to the seaside on a schoolday, paint pictures of cars and flowers directly onto the wallpaper, eat nothing but beef stew, breakfast cereal, and pancakes at the cafe in town.

As we grow older our passions for all these things lessen gradually, so precisely in synchronisation with our increasing ability to act for ourselves that it seems almost mechanical. With the impulses of children, as adults we would be a danger (as they say of the psychotic) to ourselves and others, so perhaps this is all just as well.

But there's an echo or a shadow, or something, that brings a tinge of regret. Now we can do all these things, the wanting has gone and for all this independence those desires have been lost and the real strong soul-filling pleasure has ebbed away.

There's love, of course, but that's not the same.