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As I recall, there were only two rules in my seventh grade improv class.

Firstly, never say “no”  to your partner— it is always “yes, and...”.

Secondly, retire any joke that has been used three times because it’s not funny anymore. (Eventually Mrs. Roberts implemented a third rule that prohibited the class from impersonating Michael Jackson, but even then I understood that was for her personal sanity rather than a legitimate lesson for comedy.)

These rules came rushing back to me this last week as I was hurdling down a lava river without a jetpack for the thirtieth time. Luckily, my three year old niece was en route to catch me with a giant claw. Rabbles of laughter overflowed from her belly as she saved me from being dragged away by invisible currents of molten magma, knowing full well that she would be doing it again two minutes later. Equipped with a limitless imagination, it seems she understood Mrs. Robert’s first rule without instruction. But the second rule? She definitely missed the memo. As far as she’s concerned, the jokes never stop being funny.

Again

Indeed, if there is a single word that could sum up the few days spent in deep play with my cherished goddaughter, it would be ‘repetition’—or perhaps, simply, ‘again.’” Everything that delighted her, she wanted it ‘again.’ Throw the ball high? Again! Have the ball land on my head? Again! Make a funny sound when you take a sip of water? Encore! Every repetition was a welcome reprise.

This is not a new discovery about the nature of children, just one that is fresh on my mind. G.K. Chesterton, in one of my absolute favorite of his passages from Orthodoxy, wrote about the eternal nature of divine joy: 

A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony- It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE. 

It is this kind of wide-eyed wonder which I try to hold on to in my day-to-day. Someone once said that “seeing is forgetting the name of the thing that one sees.” 

But what Chesterton forgets is that many adults do experience this “eternal appetite” — it just requires that they fall in love first. Afterall, romance has many side-effects, and surrounding your beloved with an atmosphere of irrepressible timelessness is one of them. Lovers are hermetically sealed from dullness and become ever new. Can it be that children are just in love with the world in a way that adults are not? Can this love for the world be reignited? I think so—and I think it begins with our imaginations. I no longer believe that imagination is an escape from reality— it is just the doorway to a different kind of awareness. Perhaps it is the kind of awareness that children tap into when they play or the kind of gaze we access when looking on the face of our loved ones. Maybe it is a type of awareness that can re-enliven the doldrums of a New York City commute, revive a sinking courtship, or make the presence of undesirable people actually enjoyable. Or,  maybe, this is just jet lag speaking.

I wrote a few weeks ago about having a “thirst for life” and feel this train of thought probably belongs to this same topic. It is a strange time to live in and there is more than a few things to complain about. But there is also much to fall in love with—and given the choice, I would rather join my niece in neverending exuberance than grow old and tired of monotony. There is always something to delight in. Don’t you agree?

Never bored,

Bradley