Look
into the eye of the child close to you; you can be sure that his/her eyes are
clear and bright. Kids know how to smile and when they laugh they just don’t
care. Little wonder why when they breathe their shoulders don’t have to go up
and down like many adults have mastered. No thanks to our mastery in
worrying. It’s quite amazing to discover
that majority of what made our childhood memorable and fun has been lost to
adulthood. Not knowing that many of them are basically the recipes answerable
to making our lives memorable and fun. The greatest of all law is to love and
like Mahatma Gandhi puts it “The law of love could be best understood and
learned through little children” That makes it easier to understand why Jesus
said "I
can guarantee this truth: Unless you change and become like little children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”. The following lessons can be
learnt from kids;
Dream Big
Every child has an
expectation of what he or she would become. A child wants to become a doctor or
a lawyer just at the site of one. Their intricate ability to dream and live in
their imagination is evident in their discussion and play. A child would ride
in the best jeep of his choice, create sound of the engine with the mouth and
then get the same feeling with anyone who drives such a car as he drives to the
destination of his choice. All in the mind! Only kids do such. They are
naturally armed with the mindset that they can be anything, giving no thought
to fear, limitations or boundaries and to a great extend nature works with the
imagination and expectation of the minds. Though to dream is cheap, yet, many
adults can’t afford it.
Honesty
Kids are honest to a
fault and they just don’t know how to hide their feelings like we adults do.
They say things just the way they are, to the best of their descriptive
intelligence and proficiency. Kids wear their expressions all over them. You
essentially don’t need to have a degree in soothsaying to tell when a child is
angry, happy, frightened or indifferent. Contrarily, with adults, you have to
listen carefully to what is been said and then discern the messages behind non-verbal
expressions. Adults conceal expressions for many reasons, making communication
and ability to maintain sincerity very difficult.
Valuing
Relationship
There are only few things
kids love much more than hanging out with their friends.
Given the chance, Kids would never leave their friends’ side. At that age
they still have the mastery to admire, respect, and trust their friends
unconditionally. Adults forget that a healthy personal relationship is a
vital key to happiness. Adults are the ones scared of talking to
strangers. We still hold in high esteem the ‘don’t talk to anybody you don’t
know advice and when they call or talk to you, please don’t answer’ –hence not
meeting new people, forgetting that our old friends were once strangers. Adults
are too careful to spare anyone benefit of the doubt, so very afraid of
betrayal. We say all men/women are the same despite that all men don’t have the
same name, face or genetic makeup.
Unending Curiosity About
Everything
No one is constantly
driven by curiosity
as a child. The fact that kids are constantly in pursuit of the unknown guides
their education and help them input important files in their virgin but big
memory. They ask questions like there’s no tomorrow, and you wonder if the
questions will ever end. Look at how P. J. O'Rourke puts it “You know your
children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and
refuse to tell you where they're going” Naturally adults don’t know that you
hardly loose a thing when you ask but you risk all when you don’t ask. Adults don’t ask questions for all the wrong
reasons. We feel it’s shameful not to know, but it’s foolish not to ask when
you actually don’t know. Adult feel safer to assume not noting that assumption
is the least form of knowledge. You might not get answers to all questions like
kids don’t but you’ll never get an answer to a question you never asked.
Playfulness
and Simplicity
The primary occupation of
every child is to play and it can be amazingly dramatic to see parents spend
the first 12 months teaching a new born how to talk and walk all for them to be
later yelled at to sit down and be quiet. Kids are the ones
that discover dance well before coming to terms with what music is or is not. It’s
not a terrible thing to be childish every once in a while. We ‘serious adults’
feel we need to constantly remain so serious to retain our maturity. Maturity
is sometimes overrated. Kids live spontaneously and that naturally affords them
to maximize fun, enjoying the beauty of every moment.
Great
Forgiving Spirit
Kids do not know how to
hold grudges; malice is a word kids have to grow up to understand. When they
are hurt they might say things like “I won’t play with you again” but you can
be so sure that it won’t last. Un-forgiveness has been traced to severe stress
and anxiety.
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