Caine’s Arcade: Resourceful, Can-do Stuff

Andrew Malcolm slipped this into twitter last night and it just completely charmed me. Young Caine is a small businessman within his community; he’s got a dream, a clever head and an open heart. He has everything he needs to succeed in America: curiosity, imagination, vision, ambition, energy, optimism and openness. He also has a “government” (in the form of his father) that is happy to see him dream and explore ideas and avenues, one that’s willing to let him run with his head and sink or swim without a lot of hand-holding or oversight.

People say kids don’t do this stuff, anymore — create things out of cardboard boxes and their own imaginations. Obviously, they do.

A long time ago, I wrote: America is wide-awake and dreaming glorious dreams. I wonder if she still is? I’m not sure I would write it, today, when it seems we’re being told to put away dreaming and stop thinking that free markets work.

Young Caine demonstrates that people still want to dream, and that their dreams are not especially outsized. But increasingly, I wonder if the culture is amenable toward allowing people their dreams, and that makes this seem bittersweet, to me.

If people know they’re allowed to dream, and to aspire, and to build, they will do it. It is part of our divinely-sparked nature to create, because we are, after all, made in the image of the Creator, himself — full of wonder, intention and consent.