My
New Year’s resolution is to be more like a small child.
Between
babysitting and helping my mom in her pre-school, I have been spending a large
amount of time with little children this winter break. And believe me, it’s quite refreshing – when living
on a college campus one tends to forget that humans beings exist who are
neither students between the ages of 18 and 22 nor middle-aged professors. The little souls have been quite a joy: not
only are they cute beyond belief which of course makes me want to take them all
home with me and/or have my own (about 7682153 years from now), but their
fundamentally different ways of operating stand in contrast to the world I am now
inheriting as a young adult. What is
this contrast, might you ask? Some might say responsibility and dependency,
maturity and naiveté, ability and inability. But no.
Fascination – fascination is
what sets childhood apart.
And I
don’t mean fascination with anatomy, the laws of physics, economics, politics,
or the movements of history. It is easy
to be fascinated with the big things. I
am talking about the fascination I saw in a 3-year-old boy’s face when he
fiddled endlessly with the controls of his new electronic train set, moving it
up and down the track. “Look, it moves!
Isn’t it amazing?” I am talking about the joy I saw when my mom
gave 4 little kids squirt bottles full of watered-down paint to squirt in the
snow outside. Splashes of red, yellow,
and blue; “Look, colors! Look, more colors! How beautiful.”
What
are the rest of us likely to do when faced with such things? Walk away.
Get bored.
Have
you ever seen a child in nature? Making a snowball? Building a treefort?
Running in the grass? That smile when looking at a bug with a magnifying glass?
They seem to see wonder in everything
that is. Not just for what it is. Or how it is
or what it means to to them. Just that
it is, right there before them, taking shape,
moving to and fro. The miracle of
existence that we all seem to forget about in the meantime while we are off
growing up.
And
yes, they scream. Yes, they cry. But so do we.
And unlike us, they forgive the next morning. They say I love you 5 minutes after you walk
in the door. They say everything they
think and mean everything they say. They
smile with wonder when they hear a new story.
When they’re curious, they ask. They give hugs precisely when they want to. When they’re sad, they let you know. And when they’re happy, the sun dances along
with their smile.
“Oh,
but we
have the weight of world on our shoulders,” the grown world says in reply. Mouths to feed. Work to do.
Dreams to chase. The small things
are just that - small. But perhaps if we
could remember the glory in a snowball, a bug, a treefort . . . in the legs we
have to run, in spontaneous I-love-yous, in the fly on the windowsill and the stable “forts” in which we sleep…then perhaps this weight would be just slightly
easier to carry. After all, the small
beauty around us is what gives the “big things” meaning. A
wise man – let’s just call him Jesus – once said: “Let the children come to me. Don't stop them! For the Kingdom of
Heaven belongs to those who are like these children." (Matthew 19:14)
The
Kingdom of Heaven is all around you. Try
to see with the eyes of a child.
We
teach them the ways of the world, of maturity, of life, for in our world they
are clay to be molded, ignorant minds to be structured, and innocent souls to
nurture.
And
that may be true. But maybe, just maybe,
we have something to learn here too.
