Willow and Jaden Smith, the teenage spawn of actors Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith, gave a bizarre interview to the NY Times’ T magazine that left many readers scratching their heads.
Willow, 14, says school is overrated and causes depression in children. She admits to attending school for one year. Her 16-year-old brother Jaden, who seems to be the most mentally addled of the pair, said, “school is not authentic because it ends. It’s not true. It’s not real.”
According to Jaden, traffic accidents prove school is a waste of time.
“You never learn anything in school,” he theorized. “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 also revealed she can control time because time doesn’t exist. “I mean, time for me, I can make it go slow or fast, however I please, and that’s how I know it doesn’t exist.”
The following are excerpts from the interview with T magazine:
I’m curious about your experience of time. Do you feel like life is moving really quickly? Is your music one way to sort of turn it over and reflect on it?
WILLOW: I mean, time for me, I can make it go slow or fast, however I please, and that’s how I know it doesn’t exist.
JADEN: It’s proven that how time moves for you depends on where you are in the universe. It’s relative to beings and other places. But on the level of being here on earth, if you are aware in a moment, one second can last a year. And if you are unaware, your whole childhood, your whole life can pass by in six seconds. But it’s also such a thing that you can get lost in.
How have you gotten better?
WILLOW: Caring less what everybody else thinks, but also caring less and less about what your own mind thinks, because what your own mind thinks, sometimes, is the thing that makes you sad.
JADEN: Exactly. 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.
WILLOW: And then you think about what you think, which is very dangerous.
You mentioned breathing earlier, and it’s also an idea that recurs in your songs.
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.
