Where Utopia Exists

Growing up, it was rare to have watched any movie more than once, other than The Wizard of Oz, which was annually broadcast on CBS, like a holiday event, throughout my childhood. The exception to that for me was the movie The Swiss Family Robinson, which I saw at least three times on broadcast television during my childhood.

I loved everything about that movie: a family shipwrecked on a remote, unpopulated, South Pacific island, who created a kind of utopia. They lived in a magnificent treehouse, played games with the local fauna, and cleverly used the local flora to not only survive, but thrive. It was perfect. Not only was the family lovingly together, but they had managed to discover joyful freedom and harmony both with one another and the world around them. Yes, there was an episode when pirates threatened, but the worst thing that happened was that, in the end, they were "rescued." To this day, I wonder how anyone who had created such a wonderful place, such a peaceful, joyful lifestyle with nothing but sun, fun, and love, could want to return to the hum-drum work-a-day world of school, rules, and proper clothing.

But that's utopia for you. Even in our fiction, we can't keep living there. 

Of course, I didn't understand it at the time, but I know now that we create utopias, nirvanas, and heavens, not as destinations, but as directional arrows. There will always be pain and suffering, at least in this world. People who have survived real life shipwrecks don't build wonderful treehouses, but rather scrimp and scrap and barely get by. Often they die. History is full of stories of utopia communities that either imploded, or evolved into, at best, hum-drum work-a-day worlds of schools, rules, and proper clothing.

I recently spent a couple days at a preschool in Florida where I observed classrooms and interacted with both educators and children. The older children, in particular, remembered me from an earlier visit. They played with me, climbed on my lap, held my hand, made space for me at circle time, and generally included me in everything they did. It was like a reunion of old friends. When I left their classroom to go elsewhere, they made me promise to come back. 

That brief time I spent with them was, indeed, utopia. Fleeting perhaps, but real nevertheless. Big, systemic utopia may be beyond us, but these small ones, these moments when pain and suffering disappear, when school, rules, and proper clothing don't matter, are the actual article. Utopias can be created on desert islands. They can also be created in schools, homes, and anywhere that humans are together. Maybe some of you experienced this during yesterday's Thanksgiving Day celebrations.

As I was leaving at the end of the day, I said goodbye to one of the children who had created utopia with and for me. "Oh, there you are," she said, as if she had been looking for me, "I made this for you." She handed me a piece of paper that she had folded into a card. On all four pages, she had drawn hearts in a rainbow of colors.

This is the only place utopia exists outside of our hopes and dream, in these small moments of human kindness and connection. And that is more than enough.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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