Our children have this magical way of growing up without us even noticing. The greatest miracle of expansion from a little fetus to a wonderful human taking their place in the world, cannot be taken for granted. It is an amazing thing, growth. It’s a golden truth, magical in every way. It fascinates us, we gush over it and it catches us by surprise when our little baby turns 11.
Happy birthday little big girl~
Shanghai has recently been one the fastest growing economies in the world with yearly growth percentages measured in double digits. In this city of now over 23 million, it is the migrant workers who drive the whole giant machine forward and through it all remain faceless…
In a life where we rush from the days of our childhood to gather information and knowledge that we believe will help us grow, many of us end up facing an awakening later along the way. The truth that we seek so desperately appears to be much simpler than we had projected it to be. Maybe instead of all the baggage we carry, the books we read, the college degrees we hang on our walls, a shrinking back to basics is what is needed. Any time I had a revelation of any kind, it seemed to appear from the simplest moments in life, a raindrop, a rainbow, a flower, a walk in the forest, the smile of a child, a look in the mirror, a moment with a friend, a twinkle in an eye…
Every so often I am compelled to change gears and alter the direction of my stride and the search never ends…
Every once in a while I get this great longing to “zoom out”. It is a process I go through when things threaten to get heavy or dull. When I feel that life seems ordinary, loud alarm bells ring inside my mind, because in fact, nothing in this world is ordinary. Life is awesome and full of awe inspiring miracles, from the moment we arrive to this planet with an erased memory and a vague sense of mission, to the nuclear spurts of growth we go through from embryos to adults, to the very simple yet unbelievable fact that we live on a ball that is spinning in a great unknown space and hurling through it at an impossible speed. So nothing is ordinary and it is sinful to treat it as such. How can anyone be bored knowing this??!!
city center, originally uploaded by ~mimo~.
Shanghai grows in front of our eyes at a staggering speed. When we moved here over 6 years ago, the SWFC (also known as the bottle opener), currently the tallest building in Shanghai was barely visible at its early stages of construction. Now, the new shanghai tower has risen to almost the height of the jin mao tower and the ifc twin towers are standing and buzzing with life. The circular walking bridge is also a new addition and it keeps on going and transforming on a daily basis.
Via Flickr:
odc~ starts with c
A view of Shanghai’s financial district from the oriental pearl tower.
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With 2 days left in my 365 project, I realize how incredibly fast this year has gone by. It always amazes me how elastic time is and how differently it can be perceived. Having a holiday can go by so fast while waiting for a holiday to come can last forever. Watching children grow is another fast train. With the coming of the year of the dragon, I realize that 6 years have passed since our move to China and how Lea moves so fast into her future in front of my unbelieving eyes.
Living in this giant expanding metropolis, we sometimes forget how impressive its rapid growth is, until someone visits and we play the role of tour guide only to rediscover and be awed again and again by the speed at which the future is catching up with Shanghai. Everywhere you look, new construction sites are mushrooming and high rises appear as if out of no where. What is the master plan here? How far is it going and to what end? It certainly is fascinating to be at the center of it all; another human race empire in the making.
photo taken: woman making a video of the 360 degree movie in the urban planning museum in Shanghai
At a certain point in our lives, our bodies grow to maximum capacity and from that point on, they begin to deteriorate. The only part of the human that continues to evolve is the head, the spirit and soul that drive it, and what lives in it and around it. That is the only place out of which a human can make a breakthrough, isn’t it? Humans evolve through their mental development, their art, their creativity, their revelations, their connections.. and if these are trained correctly and well invested in, then the greatest reward of all, wisdom and human development can occur. Which begs the question, why are we humans so obsessed with the outward looks of our bodies and why do we fear the signs of aging instead of looking inward as we are meant to do when we get older?
A word that is born in children and lives in their very essence. They zip through their first years with a great hunger to learn, to be, to run, to eat, to play, to see, to experience and they do that with a great intensity. And we often catch ourselves asking: “where do they get all this energy?” They are acting as a human is meant to be, uninhibited, free, soaking up the impressions of every single moment. I love observing them, photographing them, learning from them and I feel so lucky to parent one of them.
Photo: Lea in Estepona Port, Andalusia, Spain
上海 Shanghai, to literally mean the “upper sea”, perhaps due to its closeness to the ocean, is a city destined for growth and prosperity. As the most populated (about 20 million people) city in mainland China, it has become the economical and financial center of all China. Living in Shanghai meant being constantly aware of change. It develops at a very fast rate and does not give any sign of slowing down. During my walk today I saw through this door of a new construction site in Pudong the two landmark towers of Shanghai and realized that when we moved to Shanghai the taller building (SWFC), also called the bottle opener was a construction site…I wonder what Shanghai will look like a few years from now!
They say if something is not growing then it can only be dying. Shanghai is definitely growing…