Posted on August 9, 2009 - by Rasham
On Children: Never Intended to Fade
I have heard it said before that children are the world, and I never quite understood in what capacity that phrase was meant to be understood, and then like a spent star my consciousness was altered and gravity seemed to shift and I was upside-down: children are everything in this world.
Pure souls from some mother energy in this universe are granted to us for safekeeping and protection: it is the responsibility of parents, teachers, and communities to see that these foreign creatures are assimilated and taught to be one of the pack. They are excited, inquisitive, they ask questions that fire like rounds from an automatic weapon, one after another, never satisfied or complete. Nothing stops them, they have absolutely no hesitations when trying something new, and their curiosity is admirable: it is a beautiful process when any creature for the first time learns his limits in an infinite world.
So what does this mean, ‘children are the world’? We were all children, did we forget? And in our adulthood, we are reminded of our own beginnings on earth when we are in the presence of children: we envy them. It is no secret that we long to be like children, to be happy as they are, to have natural enthusiasm for simple things, to live outside of our daunting egos and selfish desires, to not need a cocktail at the end of the day to retire feelings of disgust and anguish. Love seems so tainted when you add a bit of greed and dishonesty; a child has no idea of these fallacies of human nature, of what it means to cheat, lie, steal; they only do when we teach them. They are never self-seeking, just needy of attention. And oh how we long to be like them! To have youthful skin, a carefree approach and a mannerism that lacks evidence of corruption and bitterness (which we blame on years of social survival in the ethical wilderness of our country).
And what do we do with these precious icons of purity and innocence? We ignore them. We sit them in front of televisions and video games which serve to impact their fragile brains and rot away their natural dispositions. We refuse to answer their questions: we have machines to do that now. We think they benefit from the latest in ‘Made in China’ toy technology, when all that is truly achieved is a temporary suspension of creativity, a brick wall inhibiting the potentials of their imaginations. The very things we love about children are the very things we unknowingly take from them: like how birds are admired for freedom in flight, we keep them clipped and caged, a flower adored for its blossom and scent, we take it for ourselves so that it may wilt and wither. Children are not meant for sitting and silence, so why do we prematurely expose them to such devastating forms of mental suppression?
Bright lights, flashing illustrations, and rapidly moving displays of animated characters are intriguing to kids, you say. Kids learn from educational games and aids, they are better because of them. No. They are not. These robotic replacements for humanity tamper with a child’s development; they make for either an isolated-spaced-out-always-in-la-la land little girl, or a boy who moves throughout the day in the same way as a cartoon mouse; sporadic, unpredictable and destructive. We see these oddities in our children, and we diagnose them; she has a learning disorder and must be held back a grade, and he has ADHD and must therefore be prescribed a drug.
Our children become adults prematurely, by having such expectations imposed upon them by teachers and parents alike. When a child seems impatient while learning to read from a mechanical teddy bear we think there is something amiss: he must be punished. We think they should be calm, able to entertain themselves quietly while we tune into other social aspects of our lives. But they are children, and by nature of them being young they are incapable of such adult behaviors. And we subconsciously love them for it, we admire their free spirit and wide eyed view of the world, but we are usually without such visions having been conditioned to accept the value of ‘a dollar spent a dollar earned’. This becomes that which we value; we abandoned everything childlike about ourselves in order to perpetuate our survival. We project this upon our kids, making sure that they are appreciative of all we offer because it comes at a cost to us. Years and years of societal living, junk food and the evening news has resulted in a loss of nativity and naked intuition throughout our adulthood; we suffer from self inflicted conditions of our own diminishing existences. But young children are fresh and glowing with spiritual awareness, of connectedness between humanity and earth, which is sadly guaranteed to dwindle as they strive to be exactly like those adults whom they admire. Questions regarding their environment are replaced by questions about the Disney Channel lineup, and the desire to learn about aquatic life at the local estuary is replaced by a desire to be like Miley Cyrus. It isn’t uncommon to come across an eight year old who suffers from the same demented conditions as we do: jealousy, laziness, and high cholesterol.
So yes, children are the world. They embody all which is good, honest, and pure in our eyes. It is a shame that we were entrusted to raise them, because truly we are given children, our gifts of bright light, and throughout the years (and due to problematic inherited methods of parenting) we mishandle it in such a way as to depress its glow long before it was ever intended to fade.