
Kids brought up in Hollywood can often seem worlds apart from kids bought up in, say, Shepton Mallet.
But Will Smith’s sprogs Jaden
and Willow have shown just how wildly different their thinking is to
your average 14 and 16-year-old.
In an interview with the New York Times’ T Magazine, Jaden and Willow, who are home-schooled, talk about life, the universe and pretty much everything.
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And sometimes their answers are, well, a bit baffling…
Things very much start as they
mean to go on, with a question about what they’re reading at the moment
throwing up ‘quantum physics’ and the Indian philosopher Osho for
Willow, and ‘The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life and ancient texts;
things that can’t be pre-dated’ for Jaden.
No Harry Potter in the Smith
household, then, and as if to compound the fact, Willow later adds:
“There’re no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and
then I read them again, and it’s the best thing.”
Jaden adds that Willow has been ‘writing her own novels since she was 6’. Impressive…
Asked about their music and
whether it’s improved, Jaden picks up on what Willow says about ‘caring
less’ about what others think because that can have negative effects.
“Exactly,” he says. “Because
your mind has a duality to it. So when one thought goes into your mind,
it’s not just one thought, it has to bounce off both hemispheres of the
brain. When you’re thinking about something happy, you’re thinking about
something sad.

“When you think about an apple,
you also think about the opposite of an apple. It’s a tool for
understanding mathematics and things with two separate realities. But
for creativity: That comes from a place of oneness. That’s not a duality
consciousness. And you can’t listen to your mind in those times - it’ll
tell you what you think and also what other people think.”
And that’s not all. They’ve a lot to say on traditional schooling too.
Says Jaden: “Here’s the deal:
School is not authentic because it ends. It’s not true, it’s not real.
Our learning will never end. The school that we go to every single
morning, we will continue to go to.”
Willow adds: “Forever, ‘til the day that we’re in our bed.
Willow adds: “Forever, ‘til the day that we’re in our bed.
Jaden: “Kids who go to normal school are so teenagery, so angsty.”
Willow: “They never want to do anything, they’re so tired.”
Jaden: “You never learn anything
in school. Think about how many car accidents happen every day.
Driver’s ed? What’s up? I still haven’t been to driver’s ed because if
everybody I know has been in an accident, I can’t see how driver’s ed is
really helping them out.”
Willow: “I went to school for
one year. It was the best experience but the worst experience. The best
experience because I was, like, ‘Oh, now I know why kids are so
depressed’. But it was the worst experience because I was depressed.”

A question about the recurrence of the theme of ‘breathing’ in there music throws up this exchange:
Willow: “Breathing is
meditation; life is a meditation. You have to breathe in order to live,
so breathing is how you get in touch with the sacred space of your
heart.”
Jaden: “When babies are born,
their soft spots bump: It has, like, a heartbeat in it. That’s because
energy is coming through their body, up and down.”
Willow: “Prana energy.”
Jaden: “It’s prana energy because they still breathe through their stomach. They remember. Babies remember.”
Willow: “When they’re in the
stomach, they’re so aware, putting all their bones together, putting all
their ligaments together. But they’re shocked by this harsh world.”
Jaden: “By the chemicals and things, and then slowly…”
Willow: “As they grow up, they start losing.”
Jaden: “You know, they become just like us.”
Finally, as you might expect, their future ambitions are pretty lofty.
Jaden: “I have a goal to be just
the most craziest person of all time. And when I say craziest, I mean,
like, I want to do like Olympic-level things. I want to be the most
durable person on the planet.
Willow: “I think by the time we’re 30 or 20, we’re going to be climbing as many mountains as we can possibly climb.”
Whether this is actual mountains
or metaphorical mountains is unclear. But whatever they are, we’re
pretty speechless after that lot.
Image credits: Rex Features/Wire Image
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