[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't that she "maybe later"ed going to mars but that when she began considering reasons i could not decamp for space, she didn'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'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'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's what it is to live, the grammar of life. so these gestures that deliver love are critical

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