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Ordinary Wonder
When I turned sixty years old, now a long time ago, with my wife I went on a trip to Japan, and visited the temple of Ise. Do you know why the temple of Iise is important?
It’s destroyed and rebuilt every twenty years. In the East, eternity is not built forever, but constantly.
Young people arrive at the temple at twenty years old, see how it’s done, at forty they rebuild it, then they stay explaining to the twenty year olds. It’s a good metaphor for life: first you learn, then do, then teach.
They are the young people who will save the earth.
Young people are the messages we send to a world we will never see.
It’s not them climbing on our shoulders, it’s us climbing on them, to see the things we won’t be able to live through.
Renzo Piano
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Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
