The Cool Web Youth Quotes

Graves is skeptical about whether adults could ever handle the "wide glare" of children's experience. In saying this, he suggests that the children's world is symbolically wider than the adults, since children aren't able to focus their thoughts in the same way as adults. Adults tend to think of the world in terms of practical information, and language helps them do this. Children, on the other hand, tend to experience everything as a potentially overwhelming experience.

Here, Graves says that if we adults were ever able to go back and experience the world without any kind of filter, we'd probably go totally insane. Just think about what would happen if every adult in the world suddenly had the mind of a child who couldn't speak yet. The world would be completely overwhelming and we wouldn't know what to do without experience. Worse yet, we wouldn't be able to communicate experience to one another, and the world might more or less fall apart.