What’s in a name?
Kosi Kosi (pronounced Koh-she Koh-she) is from a Polish children’s song where kids learn to clap their hands when something excites them. Maybe it’s excitement from seeing Babcia (Grandma) and Dziadziu (Grandpa), maybe it’s from listening to Baby Shark for the fourteen billionth time in the same day, or maybe it’s from getting to jump on the trampoline.
Kosi Kosi is a simple reminder to play and be amused in this very moment.
It commits the idea that time shared is a reason for celebrating.
I played Kosi Kosi with my niece and became endlessly amused by her endless (repetitive) amusement. What a pleasure it was to enjoy her limited experience on display in this tiny blob of happiness.
I clapped and sang along. Saying the words to Kosi Kosi made me realize how strange and absurd a song it actually is. How unusual and random most kid’s songs are.
But it makes sense.
Kids are busy just being alive.
They don’t care if black-hearted people are going blueberry picking or if groups of wild forest-gnomes eat ants and frog legs for dinner, it’s all great (yes, these are examples of Polish kid’s songs).
The songs reflect a state of being akin to absurdity, a sort of purposeless world where anything can be amusing. So everything is amusing.
Just think of something you do everyday.
Breathing, walking, sleeping, crapping, talking, eating, drinking, whatever.
It’s all just as wild as these kid’s songs.
It’s all absurd.
How a collection of processes must happen all at once for the body to breathe or walk. How listening to a combination of sounds can somehow bring people to tears.
How you reading the ideas I’ve written here creates a momentary relationship between us. I share ideas (input), then you connect through experiences and thoughts (processing), and take what’s useful to apply elsewhere (output).
These processes have become a reflex, right?
You don’t think about it anymore. No attention required.
Once it’s a reflex you stop being curious about it.
It Just Is.
But what happens when you slow down and wonder about the absurdity?
What if you take a good look at what you assume to know and suddenly see a world of detail?
What questions do you have now?
I found my Path to Reflex through outright confusion. I see the world with a very certain uncertainty. I take the golden road down the center only to get lost. And my reflex is to keep laughing.
When I used to teach science to middle and high schoolers, I enjoyed the challenge of turning something many students found useless into smaller, digestible, and easy to apply ideas. This became an engaging experience that they related elsewhere in their lives, somewhere that mattered to them. Then they’d tell me they enjoy science class, and I’d tell them what a bunch of bastards they truly are.
And the amusement never ends.
Here I share my reflex to take each day and be charmed by it.
To reveal the ways that Kosi Kosi can become a reflex and laugh at the garbage each day throws at you.
To take my life of amusement and encourage others to be more amused.
Kosi Kosi is the act of finding reasons, however small or large, to clap your hands and celebrate. Once you find your reasons they’ll begin to show their abundance.
Because they were never hiding in the first place.
Why subscribe?
I’m just someone who enjoys science, art, food, and laughing.
I like digging through articles almost as much as digging through playlists or book shelves.
I’m a collector who has nowhere to put the items he acquires, so mostly I just think about them.
And if it’s allowed, I’ll bring a guitar.
Where this goes is still a mystery, but I have so much I’m excited to share.
As with most things, I’m looking forward.
