Move the World Around

I took this picture at Design Festa 33 in Tokyo, Japan in May 2011.  My roommates invited me to this enormous gathering of artists, hipsters and design lovers in a gigantic building with several floors and many enormous rooms filled to the brim with tables, booths and displays complemented by food and live music.  There were also plenty of interestingly dressed Japanese people, as this was somewhat of a hipster fashion show, making this one of the coolest and strangest experiences during my time there.

However, the most memorable moment of all that madness was what I saw after I had already checked out all the booths.  I noticed this toddler vigorously and intensely moving this seat across the floor.  I have no idea why.  There didn't appear to be any need for it.  He had just decided that this chair needed a new place to be, and he was the one to move it there.  I'm not sure he knew exactly where that was supposed to be, but he wasn't going to get any grief from me on that account.  His parents noticed and let him pursue his passion.  They didn't know what he knew, but understood that truth, and let him pursue his own path.

Maybe he had seen that the world needed to be moved around to be more beautiful, and he took action.  Perhaps he thought he was doing something important.  Or maybe he was just having fun.  It could be that he knew it was all just practice for when he would really have to move something important, maybe for himself, or maybe for someone else.  Perhaps he cannot walk without the seat, and he is really using the world as his means of transportation.  I think that by moving, he moves the world, and by moving the world, he enables himself to move.  A beautiful symbiotic relationship.

Who knows?

Does he?

Whatever he is doing here, he's doing it better than anyone else could imagine.