Through the eyes of a child

 

I traveled over the weekend. Till about 4pm Friday evening, I had no idea I'd be traveling about 300km or more away from the city. Just reminds me how unpredictable life can be. I am glad I went though and there were lots of lessons to learn plus mini precious moments.

I traveled with family friends; a couple and two of their little ones. Like I said there was a lot to learn but I'll focus on some things the tots reminded me about.

We are talking about an 8 year old boy and 4 year old here. When we set off and the kids got comfy it wasn’t long before I wished we were in a plane. I couldn't wait to get to our destination. The noise! They were screaming and jumping and talking and talking and more screaming and may be it wouldn’t be too bad if they just could keep their voices low; maybe whisper? Like always I had to engage the ‘shutting it all out’ mode: not easy if you ask me…. but possible ;)

As I sat in the car listening to their conversations and watching them jump all over in the car, I couldn’t help but think to myself how amazing it is to be a child. You know it makes a lot of sense when Jesus says that to enter the kingdom of heaven one must be like these little ones.

Me thinks (like someone I know likes to say) that children have a great attitude or approach to life.

For instance…

Life is lived now not later.... now:
I don’t know how many times these kids were told don’t do this, don’t do that, stop this and that and sit down and put your seatbelts on. But they'd look back at their mother and keep quiet for what seemed like a second and then they'd be at it again. So I thought I guess this postponing thing doesn’t work for kids. Like let’s play later or scream later or pull each other’s eyes out when we get there. Maybe they think to themselves if I can and feel like then why not do it now, why later?

In the adult world when you’re worried, uncertain, lacking confidence; later works perfectly fine.Well, of course the parents concern here is safety and etc, but that takes us to the next one....

Worrying is a waste of energy, does it even exist?
The kids’ dictionary doesn’t seem to have worry in it. Maybe this is tied into a few other things like faith, hope and trust. They just seem to think or live like there is never any need to be worried. They almost always seem to say to themselves; "what’s the worst that could happen, really?"

They especially have fat bank of confidence when their parents are around, like they are their super heroes that can wave off anything if the need arose to do just that.

So they go all out and enforce point number one: live no matter what, enjoying every minute.

The little girl actually fell when her dad suddenly stepped on the break. She had been jumping about. So she goes boom to the floor and then sits there with quite an expression on her face and gets up, has a moment of silence and next minute she was up and all over....

Life moves on....you fall, get up and move on:
Whenever a child has a bad fall, falls off their bike, hits their head on the wall, bleeds from a cut etc it never takes too long before they are at this whole being a kid thing again. One would think they'd never ride again or run again but they do almost in less than minutes. It rarely matters how bad the experience was.

I wondered how many times I had said never again coz of something that didn’t go too well or after a terrible experience. I need to cultivate the habit of believing I can try again, maybe this time I won’t fall and guess what I'd have had such a ‘lovely time.’

Love and forgiveness:
With all the screaming, yelling and jumping comes the fighting. These two kept fighting in between their happy moments… it was unbelievable at some point. The astonishing thing was after a fight, after swearing to bite off each other’s noses and chins they’d seem to take in the happenings and resume the playing like they didn’t fight at all.

Try that in the other world where it’s about sulking and giving silent treatment and not using the same path.

I guess in their world when you love you forget about the biting noses off and just give all you have within. I enjoyed watching the boy taking care of his little sister. When she grew weary of the playing he’d ask if she was hungry or sleepy. If she was sleepy he’d offer his laps for her to rest her head and cover her with his sweater. It was so sweet.

Forgive, let go, move on but above all love…even people who want to break your legs.

Life is much easier that way.

Innocence and honesty:
Children can be so innocent. They are charming. Their mother was running a few calls to make room reservations so she says,

“Oh, yah plus two kids, one is 3 and the other is 6….”

So her son patiently waits for his mother to complete the call and then says,

“Mum, I am 8.”

You see you get a cheaper deal for the rooms so in the adult world changing a few figures here and there comes in handy and easy.

Mum turns and says, “Oh, yes you’re 8”

The little boy had a puzzled look, probably thinking his dear mother was having a few moments of insanity.

I get the feeling if she tried to explain why he was suddenly 6, he wouldn’t get it. In their world you answer the question e.g.

“Is your mother here, can I see her?”

“Yes she is but she told me to tell you she is not around.”

Of course this policy doesn’t work quite well for certain circumstances like when sugar goes missing or when the bathroom is not a comfy place to be or  when they have pulled at someone’s hair.

Every human needs some reflection time:
At some point towards the end of the journey when I had almost confirmed that these kids had unique energies; they went silent. I couldn’t believe it. These were kids that hadn't even attempted to try and sleep after more than four hours into the journey. At last all I could hear was the wind and sound of the engine. It felt.........wow! Can’t find the perfect word at the moment.

 

And they sat there; quiet, the girl sucking her fingers and the boy staring at nothing in particular. I wished I could get into their heads, have a peep and wondered if they turn things over, evaluate, and make plans to ask for the latest video games and so on.

I enjoyed this moment and confirmed that once in a while one has to get back in touch with self especially if you’re going to take these little one’s advice to live life to the fullest.

And of course you don’t’ take the whole reflection, getting in touch with self thing too far. You jump right back into life as soon as you’ve figured out a few things or even if you haven’t really figured out anything at all.

I thought the journey would end with a calm atmosphere but I was wrong…

A lovely weekend it was though …

Now let me go try to figure out how to apply some of these lessons.

I’ll try to start with the breaking legs and noses before I move on to the forgiving and loving, ha ha ha, just kiddin’

                                                        :)