In my mind I am still the kid that plays with Playmobil, the castles were real and the world not. I am often reminded of this, especially when I walk into a toy store, on purpose. I don’t mind getting older, it’s just a fact of life but I always thought that when I grow up the people around me would to.

I liked being a kid, like I said before, but I was a dreamer and the politics kids play, the teasing, bullying, the ranking of each other just was something I was not interested in, though I was part of it to. Luckily that is all in the past, I am 48 now and the world is filled with rational people who take care off each other and share the candy fairly.

I still feel like the kid of 12 stuck in a room with “grown-ups” when I am stuck in a room with grown-ups. It’s probably not fair of me, I don’t know what all these people do and what they think. They might as well be stuck in a grown-ups body like I am, playing with Playmobil, but now we are the plastic puppets ourselves with a hammer in the hand or a fireman’s cap on.

I was thinking of this, because I wanted to cheer myself up. My girlfriend is born in America and her skin is darker than other people and she has a brother who sometimes goes outside. Through her I feel the tension that racism brings about in people on the receiving end. And I don’t have to explain what is going on there if you follow the news, it is pathetic.

As a man with a child’s mind I don’t know what to do when I look at the world. I read a lot about the second world war and all that happened there. I realize that there are probably millions of people that would happily climb in to the watchtowers or sort at the end of the rails.

I live in Norway and I left the Netherlands in 2006. I didn’t leave because it was a bad place but the politics was poisoned by populism and the thought that every 10^th person I met is in his or her hard a racist was something I couldn’t handle. Here in Norway people don’t talk about politics and I don’t follow the local news so I stuck my head comfortable in the sand.

The reason I have read so many philosophy, psychology and history books is not only because I am curious but because I want to understand when the kid in us get so bitter that it starts hating the other. If you have travelled the world a little bit you might have noticed that all the kids play and act the same, till a certain age.

It’s when we grow up, and stop playing a role and start believing the role we play where it goes wrong.