Your mom was right. It's that damn phone.

Well turns out mom was right it really is that damn phone there are videos going around on short form platforms like Instagram reals and Tik Tok which have the sound of a bird singing with a caption that states something like what happened to this bird from my childhood and in the comment section you have tons of teens or young adults wondering the same thing this is the sound of a morning dove and the real reason you don't hear it anymore goes far beyond what you might initially think I remember what it was like to wake

up early on Saturday morning the spontaneity of the day not knowing what I'd get into or whether my mom had made plans for us and the Dependable cing of the morning dove that never failed to perch itself outside of my window it doesn't make much sense that I wouldn't hear the sound of this dove in the present day after all I still wake up near my window and it's not like they've gone extinct so there must be something else we're all missing what I really think it is is a certain within childhood that we managed

to lose by becoming increasingly more wired in how about now you still wired in there was a playground primarily made out of wood within walking distance of where I grew up right next to a church but that walk took what felt like eons along the way there I occasionally stopped by a tree on my streets Island that I always used to climb up appropriately named the climbing tree trying to get to the top was always a difficult Mission but a mission I was never were able to complete so instead I tried to impress one of

my parents by hanging on a trunk or positioning my body upside down when I had finished abusing the tree without harming any of its foundation I'd start again on my path towards the wooden playground and my next biggest task was getting through the 30 seconds of death it didn't inherit this name until I became a young teenager but this inescapable 30- second stretch of sidewalk had an ominous feel to it produced by these skinny leafless branches that curved above your head and Creek to like an old door that needed some WD40 a friend of mine

who used to walk to my house several days a week would often have to brace this path at night when the streets were desolate which eventually gave him the inspiration to coin the path's name and I too would always Quicken my Pace during this harmless but shiver inducing expanse even as a kid and I wasn't too sure why I was doing it branches buildings cracked sidewalks cars buzzing by and curbs to try balancing on the walk to this playground was anything but boring and when I find finally made it to the playground my curiosity and

excitement would begin to Peak what you might notice about this part of my childhood is how much imagery I was able to conjure up through something as simple as a short walk and you might be inclined to think that I'm able to recall these memories in this manner because I was a kid and the way I described things is the way that kids see the world without little to any predispositions about the world and how it works children carry with them this sense of play awe and wonder with almost everything they come in contact with

I didn't see see a tree planted on an island in the middle of the road on my street I saw a multi-layered climbing platform with a towering Peak I had to reach but even though I saw it is that it could have transformed into anything that fit the style of game I was trying to play you see as soon as you label something you can strain that thing to what you know to be true about its label and unless the object changes in some drastic way and what you know about the object is proven to

be untrue it will always have that constraint that ties to down any other possibilities I think this is what much of the content we see on our phones unconsciously gets us to do the online world is an act of consumption it's a process of a video or image or tweet trying to tell you how the world Works without figuring out what it's really like out there yourself but the world outside is a world of creation you are the one interacting and experimenting with it and trying to figure out what that thing is yourself the more

content we consume on a regular basis the more Notions beliefs and labels we add on top of everything we see it becomes purely material mechanical and incapable of anything other than what our predispositions make us see it as and this is one of the most destructive effects of over consumption your curiosity fueled by positive boredom gets destroyed nothing is boring to the child because the child can turn anything boring into an experiment a child is okay with not knowing because they aren't yet told by their parents peers and society that you should should seek to

stimulate yourself through study and consumption and they likely haven't been punished enough for exploring and experimenting to lose that ability to see things through a unique imaginative lens this is part of the reason I think we're unable to perceive the sounds of the morning doves anymore our brain through enough conditioning has labeled the morning dove as unimportant to our daily monotonous routine of going to work studying hitting the gym or scrolling endlessly and so unlike how a kid is able to perceive different objects in our environment as imaginative forms of play even though that might

not represent the real function or usage of that object we only judge things by how useful or stimulating we initially perceive them to be in other words to us the morning dove is just an insignificant bird but to kids it's this strange otherworldly being that we're able to sustain our sense of wonder around and that makes it fascinating enough to be perceived After experiencing more feelings of Adventure in 10 minutes than you've probably experienced in the past 3 years I finally arrived at the playground my feet dragged in the wood chips before I fully adjusted

to the new terrain I hopped up on the climber and began making my way to the slide then I grabbed the top of the interior of the slide and used the momentum built up from swaying to catapult myself down to the end no intrusive thoughts entered my mind I was fully immersed in the present moment and that feeling of imaginative play can rarely or ever get produced by the endless feeds of social media on your phone but perhaps what fascinated me the most about this playground was the sandbox in a sandbox there are no rules

it's up to you to create whatever you possibly could with materials you're provided and I believe a Sandbox and the lack of perception of the morning dove are intimately intertwined previous conceptions of a Sandbox don't really matter you can know a Sandbox is made of sand but you don't have to follow a set of guidelines in order to make something that can be considered valuable What mattered was that you constructed something that nobody else could replicate and satisfied the enjoyment of the moment each of these parts of my Creations in the sandbox were made of

smaller subp parts I had to form an explanation for in my head I was by no means an expert at sandboxing but that isn't what made it worth looking at and listening about what made it worth it was the fact that I had alchemized something that had once only existed in my head and created an entirely new world with its own set of systems and properties what's that Cole my mom asked I responded with this is the layer of an old man that attacks the village of scaba my mom chuckled but gave me the space

to continue this old guy he torments the people in the village by stealing their eyebrows and the only way they can escape is by hiding in this tunnel I built coming up with this kind of stuff is really only possible when you go through the process of deconstructing the world around you and taking the bits in pieces and reforming them in an unconventional way in the sandbox I was chasing novelty through deconstruction and creation and I honestly think that's what a lot of us are chasing on social media but in a much less interactive way

people crave the novelty they once experienced as a kid the type of content that completely reframes the way they see something and breaks the rules or does the opposite of what every other Creator is doing it induces a feeling in ourselves that we haven't experienced since we were a kid on the playground but the problem with viewing these cont content anomalies all the time is that this content we're consuming was not by our own doing we are not the ones removing our preconceived ideas and Notions deconstructing the world around us and molding it into our

own creation we are just consuming someone else's process of doing that and I believe that's holding back not only your creative potential but also your contentment with your daily life within each of us is this inner world of play awe and Imagination that is separate from what everyone else's inner world looks like and you can tap into that again just like when you were a kid when you remove your tendency to conform and you do that by removing the habit of overc consuming the truth is you still have access to everything in your mind and

reality that you had as a kid but with even greater potential you're probably at the very least 13 or 14 years old watching this video with a larger brain and more ways to utilize it so disconnect for a while each day remove any preconceived notions about what you see out in front of you and what you're feeling in this moment reconnect with that sense of childlike wonder that you lost somewhere along the way deconstruct the world around you and view it as a massive playground full of different ways of interacting and tinkering with its elements

to create something that makes this sandbox game of life more enjoyable sit with this world observe the way it works and use the ways you've experimented with real life to draw your own conclusions about the truth behind things and realize how often those truths are subject to change then compare that with what you're being told online and refine the construction of reality to produce better results for yourself and others life didn't stop being an experiment when you stopped being a kid you just forgot where you placed your test tubes and beers and when you've done

this for long enough and you can be curious enough to ask why and find your own answers you might just find that your ears start to perceive the sound of the morning dove once again I appreciate you guys listening to my ideas and life experiences as always and if you want to talk to people who are on a similar path who are curious who are trying to learn more about the world and get advice and get more resources about how life works then check out my free self-improvement community the link is in the description if

you're going to spend time online you might as well spend it doing something that actually promotes growth and leads to the betterment of your life so check out that Community it's completely free Link in the description usually this is where I tell you to go watch another one of my videos and plug it here but I'm not going to do that because that would be very hypocritical of this video so uh yeah go do something go do something fun have some play and I will talk to you guys soon