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"My childhood is so far away... it's like I don't even remember being a child. I think it was someone else who was a child." (Bob Dylan)

When I was a child, I thought I would remain a child forever. I thought some people had been born to be adults, and others to be children. I could never answer the grown-ups' question, "What would you like to be when you grow up," because I could not really believe that I would ever grow up. I only wanted to be a good child for the sake of Santa Claus and nothing else. Now I am said to be a grown-up. Sometimes I can believe it, sometimes not. If it is true, I must have been reborn as an adult. And so, whether I believe or not, I will remain an adult forever.

Although it was several years ago, my childhood seems to be far away for me. I feel strange when I look at old photos of my early years, because somehow I believe that the small boy in the picture with big brown eyes, curly blond hair and a sincere smile on his plump-cheeked face was not me, but another person.

He had different thoughts and feelings than I have now. He lived in another world, which provided splendid surprises and great novelties for him every day, and abounded in magic and fabulous secrets arousing interest in the world. Curiosity made him highly imaginative. The tales he heard from the kindergarten-teacher and from his mother reading them out before sleep captured his imagination, and made him feel the presence of lovely fairies, kindly elves, vicious witches, good princes and princesses, and fair-minded kings around him.

He also felt magic in the wind, the rainbow, the snow, the stars and in butterflies, tiny colourful insects and old knotted trees. The ones he showed the greatest concern about appeared in his drawings made with great care, and formed the topics of long lasting talks with good friends. He did not know much about reality--which is usually quite a relative notion for a child--but knew a lot about love, gratitude, sincerity, and tales.

Sometimes, when grown-ups seem to be strange and unkindly, I would like to be that small boy again and to be as naive as he was at that time, and I would rather not know anything about their world, about money, interest, hatred, wars, lies, and violence.