Parenting & Family Quote by Herman Hesse

Hesse smuggles a spiritual argument through a deceptively personal memory lane: if you want access to the “eternal present,” don’t chase it through abstraction or adult achievement. Go back to where perception first had teeth. The phrase “my share” is doing quiet work here. Enlightenment isn’t framed as a trophy or a total fusion with the divine; it’s an allotment, a portion of glow you’re briefly able to hold. That modesty keeps the mysticism from turning grandiose.

Then he spikes the metaphysics with an image that’s almost scandalously intimate: “the smile of God.” God isn’t thunder or law; God is approval, warmth, a look. Hesse’s intent is less doctrinal than psychological: the sacred is experienced as a mood of being seen and welcomed, which is why the route back runs through childhood. Childhood, in his telling, isn’t innocence as moral purity; it’s attention before it calcifies into habit. That’s where “discoveries” happen, not because kids know more, but because they haven’t learned what to ignore yet.

The subtext is a critique of modern selfhood: adult life teaches us to outsource presence to plans, status, and narrative coherence. Hesse counters with a retrieval mission. Remembering becomes a spiritual practice, not nostalgia. Context matters: writing in a Europe bruised by war and disillusionment, Hesse consistently casts inwardness as resistance. Returning to childhood is his way of re-entering a state where meaning arrives unforced, before the world’s noise convinces you it has to be earned.