There is no denying that the world looks brighter and more magical through the eyes of a child. We, as wise old adults, see this as childish innocence, the unsullied purity of youth, and even the age-old ignorance is bliss. Is it really such a bad thing, though?
Paper Crowns
My daughter made a crown at preschool one day. She wore it proudly in the car, and was overjoyed when I told her that yes, she could wear it into the coffee shop if she wanted. With that brown paper crown, decorated with random stickers, she was the queen of her world. She didn’t concern herself with its humble origins or lack of proper glitz and glamour. She had a crown and she made it herself. To her, the world was perfect.
I thought about that crown a lot that day, and I’ve thought about it a lot since as well. It haunts me, in a way. Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, if we could all be content with a paper crown? How long would my daughter hold onto that precious positivity? As happy as I was to see her joy, it made me sad. Some day she will grow out of her ability to see through the eyes of a child.
Is it really a lack of understanding that allows children to be so innocent? I’m beginning to think it isn’t. There is nothing about my daughter that indicates that she doesn’t understand the world. She sees much more than we give her credit for, and she processes it all. What she does lack is the cynicism and jaded opinions that we develop as we mature.
Love Thy Neighbour
…unless they are weird, creepy, suspicious looking, or…
Modern society has gone sour. I can’t think of any other way to word it. Even as the movement for random acts of kindness struggles to rise up, we are still more likely to distrust our neighbours than embrace them. We find it harder and harder to simply see the good in people. Around the world, it seems, we are losing our moral values. We are losing the ability to see the world through the eyes of a child.
Children generally don’t assume the bad before it is shown to them. We teach them to distrust. Stranger Danger and all of that. My 6-year-old son will talk to anyone and everyone at the grocery store. He will tell them his life story, including all the juicy tidbits about his entire family, if I let him go with it. I try to coach him in what kind of information is harmless to divulge to strangers and what needs to stay private. He looks at me confused. “He’s not a stranger,” my son says, “he is my friend. He smiled at me and we said hello.”
I fight an inner battle on this front almost daily. I want to trust people. Some might call me gullible. Personally I like to think that I am able to sense a bad situation, but my first instinct is to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Fairy Tales and Happy Endings
Part of the passage from childhood to responsible adult seems to involve the death of fairy tales and happy endings. When we encounter a grown-up who still believes in fairy tales, we label them as naive or childish. Maturity dictates that we learn that life isn’t all cupcakes and rainbows, and happily ever afters only happen in storybooks.
Hey, I know it’s not all cupcakes and rainbows, but I’d rather go through life thinking that it mostly is instead of being like you. You don’t sing, you don’t dance, it’s so grey all the time!
Princess Poppy – Trolls
Childhood innocence isn’t ignorance. It’s a choice to see the good in everything.
My daughter knows that we don’t have a lot of money right now. She may not understand the details of why, and I don’t really want her to. But she knows. The other day she set up a store in the corner of my parents’ living room. A selection of her favorite books were set out in an orderly display that could have been featured in a window at the local Indigo store.
“Would you like to buy a book?” she asked me as I happened to walk past on my way to the kitchen. She held out a snowman-shaped tin and rattled it, grinning ear to ear. I could hear coins clinking together.
“I’m selling books!” she beamed. “I have lots of money now. It’s for you! So you have money to buy stuff.”
I almost cried. I hugged her instead and told her thank you.
Dream Rhinoceros Dreams
When they are young, we tell our children that they can be and do anything. The world is their oyster and the universe is their playground. At the year-end Kindergarten performance, the most popular piece wasn’t one of the cute songs or silly dances. Everyone listened in hushed anticipation as the teacher asked each child in turn, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Amid all the future teachers, firefighters, astronauts, and presidents, stood my son, who proudly and confidently told the packed gymnasium, “I want to be Black Panther.”
Go big or go home!
Rhinoceros dreams are the dreams that naysayers will criticize. Dreams that are so big that they seem impossible, yet you dream them anyhow. Children know all about rhinoceros dreams, until we tell them that they have to be realistic. What is the point of a dream if it has to be realistic? Besides, through the eyes of a child, all dreams are realistic.
Why do we let the world crush our dreams?
Child of the Universe
Most of my memories from my childhood are rather fuzzy, but I know that I loved to sing. Music held a magic for me and though I was no prodigy by any means, I remember singing like I was. Songs from my youth choirs still linger in my mind. One in particular has always felt like my guiding melody. It is still a popular song for youth choirs in Canada, it seems, though I can’t find any reference to its origin.
I am only a grain of sand, tossed by water and wind. But there are many grains of sand. Where do I fit in?
Shall I follow a dream? Or are dreams made just for children? Well all of us are children now. That’s where I fit in.
Child of the Universe – unknown origin
Sung by children, the lyrics that all of us are children now seem obvious but I see it as deeper than that. Dreams are not only meant just for children, unless we concede that we are all children. On a universal scale, we can be nothing but children. When we open our minds and hearts to acknowledge that, we will find where we fit in.
Rethinking Childishness
It’s funny how we, while glorifying the wonder of childhood, consider childishness a negative trait. Granted, there are behaviours that we consider immature – temper tantrums, pouting, and jealousy are commonly touted as childish. We expect adults to have better control over emotions, whereas children are still learning. Some explanations claim that less negative behaviours are more typically labeled child-like. Honestly I still feel that negative connotation though.
Children have a gloriously pure way of looking at the world, and perhaps if we stopped associating childish things with negative feelings, we could brighten our own perspectives. It isn’t that we know better when we are older, or that we know more. We simply fail to see the wonder of things the way we did as children. Perhaps we expect too much from life. I know that we often expect too much of each other, and often of ourselves.
My father has cognitive impairment and is moving into the realm of dementia. We talk about how the elderly revert to childhood as their personal timelines begin to move backwards, so it seems. I am seeing this daily in my father, and have recognized that it can be construed as a bright side of dementia. Perhaps we can all benefit from being a little bit more childish, or child-like if you prefer, and see the world from the eyes of a child.
As for me, I’m going to go put on a paper crown and be the queen of my world for a while.