{"id":12713,"date":"2022-12-20T01:00:43","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T14:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/?p=12713"},"modified":"2022-12-20T01:28:02","modified_gmt":"2022-12-19T14:28:02","slug":"a-trip-back-to-the-magic-of-childhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/2022\/12\/20\/a-trip-back-to-the-magic-of-childhood\/","title":{"rendered":"A trip back to the magic of childhood"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mp_wrapper\">\n  <div class=\"mepr-unauthorized-excerpt\">\n    <p>Editor\u2019s note: If you would like to submit a letter for possible publication, please email it to editor@rationalist.com.au. See our\u00a0Publishing Guidelines.\nDear Editor,\n'Mindfulness' (Nicholas Van Dam, 20 August 2022) and 'magical thinking' (Dimitris Xygalatas, 10 November 2022) converged in my retreat to the balm of childhood.\u00a0\nMy first flight in a half-century to Borneo\u2019s Sarawak flew over imperilled rainforests burnt brown to the farthest smoky horizon and thirsty rivers pastelled a sickly yellow by eroded soil.\nI willed my upset adult mind\u2019s return to the embrace of the kid-cocoon. As a child, I mapped out my travel bucket list onto a map using a piece of string.\nThis time, I dreamt my magical silkworm-form spinning thread to track \u2018South-East Asia unlimited\u2019 onto a globe. It matures into the butterfly that breaks free from the COVID lockdown cocoon, looping eastward across the vast Indonesian archipelago\u00a0 from Northern Sumatra to Lombok across Java. Circumnavigating Borneo, the butterfly city-hops northward from Singapore to Bangkok via Kuala Lumpur, then hugs Vietnam\u2019s East Sea coastline between Hanoi and Saigon in a southerly hurry before flying home to south-eastern Australia.\u00a0\nI now remember the carefree child rushing to unoccupied plane windows to track meandering journeys made by waterways etching the vast green expanse of fertile rainforest below. A child\u2019s mindfulness is shielded from worldwide collapse. Lost pets and food foraging in the wild were about all there...<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n  <div class=\"mepr-unauthorized-message\">\n    <hr style=\"width: 100%;max-width: 1000px !important;height: 5px;border-width: 0;color: red;background-color: red\" \/>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">\n<h3><em>You're part way through this article. Want to keep reading?<\/em><\/h3>\n<h4><em>Only members of the Rationalist Society of Australia can read our Premium articles.\u00a0<\/em><\/h4>\n<h3 style=\"height: 20px\"><span style=\"color: #c83200\"><em><a style=\"color: #c83200\" href=\"https:\/\/rationalist.com.au\/membership\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Become a member today.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n<h4><em>Already a member? 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See our\u00a0Publishing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":444,"featured_media":12714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[75],"coauthors":[114],"class_list":["post-12713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters","tag-premium"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/444"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12713"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12729,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12713\/revisions\/12729"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12713"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}