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span class="caption" style="width: 378px;">Jostein GaarderMany see “growing up” as a step on the natural path of life.

Maturing and adapting to our surroundings is what many deem necessary to partake in the daily tasks of this world. Without that, it is often assumed that one is left on the sidelines while others progress to adulthood.

Jostein Gaarder, however, has managed to lead a successful life by resisting the urge to do so, and actually goes so far as to promote his never-ending childlike inquisitiveness and astonishment with his everyday surroundings to others so that they too can enjoy the beauty of boundless curiosity.  

“As a little boy I thought of life as a magical mystery — this life we live on earth — but my parents did not share this fascination … that’s when I decided not to be an adult, not an ordinary one anyways,” he said.

Despite this youthful outlook, the 59-year-old author looks just like any other 59 year old. His casual appearance and laidback mentality exude a comforting calmness, but that certainly does not leave him without his passions: writing, philosophy, the environment and the spectacle that is daily life.  

The author was thrust into the spotlight with his 1991 book Sophie’s World, which has gone on to sell over 30 million copies and has been translated into 53 languages.

Gaarder grew up in Oslo, Norway, in a self-proclaimed “liberal household”, where a child questioning parental roles was met with encouragement rather than punishment.  

His most popular book explores the origins of philosophy and has been praised internationally for its ability to make a subject deemed by some as intellectually unavailable to the layman understandable to a worldwide audience. He succeeded through his unique ability to tell a complex historical story through the eyes of a fictional 14-year-old girl living in Norway, with mysterious letters arriving in her mailbox every day from an anonymous philosopher that challenge the way she sees the world.

“I never had any idea that I would be so widely read or celebrated, now my books are published in 50 languages and it all happened so quickly … it never struck me that it could have happened like this.”

Having grown up in a country famous for its untouched wilderness available only a stones throw away from the capital, he fully appreciates the significance of a connection with nature, ranking it among the four essential properties of a good life along with love, friendship and health.  

Upon being asked why he places such importance on a deep connection to nature, he replies with a simple question: “When is the last time you were outside Jakarta?”

My reply that I had, in fact, just visited Bandung this past weekend, alongside thousands of other Jakartans driving their cars to swipe up the latest fashion bargains and Sundanese cuisine at the popular weekend destination obviously didn’t count or fit Gaarder’s definition of “outside Jakarta”.    

“To love something you must experience it, and to care for something you must experience it, this is also the case with nature,” he said.  

His ongoing infatuation and growing concern for the environment is what brought him on his first visit to Indonesia, a part of Indonesia and Norway’s continued commitment to environmental cooperation. At the University of Indonesia, he gave a presentation on the inexplicable connection between human rights and human responsibilities as pertaining to our lack of commitment to environmental issues.  

“It simply doesn’t make sense any longer to proclaim a person’s or a nation’s rights without simultaneously considering a few obligations, including the most important challenge of our time: How can we be able to secure the health and welfare of our planet and its future generations?”

He believes that not only is it important that we make responsible decisions about the environment, but that we are actually obligated to do so in order that our future generations (and species) can also have a chance here on earth. This argument insists that traditional horizontal boundaries of what we consider neighbors need to be expanded to include descendants thousands of years from now who will be our neighbors of the future.

And if that weren’t enough reason to change our destructive ways, in a true philosophical manner he explains that man is quite possibly the only living species in the entire universe, thus, we owe it not only to our fellow species on earth to change our path, but to the universe in it’s entirety.

“There is something in modern culture that makes us blind to the fact that we are not only living in nature; we are nature.”

In 1997, Jostein championed The Sophie Prize, US$100,000 awarded annually to an individual or group displaying alternative or inventive initiatives to modern-day development. Past recipients include the late Wangari Maathai, an African woman dedicated to social justice and the environment who later won the Nobel Prize, and Tristram Stuart for his work exposing the magnitude of food waste in much of the world.

With a list of accomplishments many could only dream of, it seems as if Gaarder’s unique strategy of being childlike may, in fact, have some truth behind it. If being childlike means appreciating your surroundings, enjoying the simple pleasures in life and questioning what others write off as the norm, it seems as if the world would be a much better place if more people made the decision to remain a child.