[while laying in bed, sharing a bag of marshmallows, watching magic schoolbus]

me: do you want to go to outer space like that?

4 y/o: no. maybe later.

me: i think i would really like to go

4 y/o: but then who would brush my hair?

what struck me about it in the moment (and the reason i wrote it down) wasn& #39;t that she "maybe later"ed going to mars but that when she began considering reasons i could not decamp for space, she didn& #39;t come up with something vital or practical, but instead this other thing

and this is not to poke fun (i would never!) but to observe that she just has a different moral imagination, and in it the things of greatest consequence aren& #39;t the ones that provide for living but the ones that add meaning. for all she knows, people are made just to love.

she doesn& #39;t yet realize that people do many other things, demonstrate many more capacities, than that — her primary experience is of people loving her and her loving people. for her, that& #39;s what it is to live, the grammar of life. so these gestures that deliver love are critical

if that& #39;s the score, she& #39;s got a good point. tho also possible she just doesnt like having tangled hair