Years ago I noticed how happy children are, and how serious adults are. And it occurred to me that somewhere along the path of our lives we lost the delight in innocent fun times.
Adults seemed to flock to things that cause them harm, yet they called them fun times. They might be involved in the serious dog-eat-dog hunt for money in the business world, or bored in their 9-to-5 humdrum existence “working for the man”, or coming up with gangs, and negative life impacting activities that lead to more harm than good in the long run. This was the exact opposite to the innocent child thinking that we once had.
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I suppose it seemed like adults tended to stress themselves out chasing material gain, fame and fortune, and then in what is called “relaxation” they partied hard out, and found numerous ways to abuse their bodies and minds. The results were bitterness, loneliness, saddness, depression, and even mental illness.
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When my children were small I delighted in playing innocent games with them. Life is so much more easier to accept and enjoy when we are with children (when it’s not a job or forced). And I wondered why adults turned from innocent fun and rushed to harmful stress.
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It seems that society likes us to be mindless, capable of work, but so obsessed with our own self destruction, entertainment, and lusts, that we wouldn’t stop to question what life was all about, and we wouldn’t wonder if we had a more meaningful reason for being alive.
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The child-like mind is a mind that is completely open to trying. It believes in hope, and wants to make discoveries, is excited about adventure, is inventive looking for answers to problems and the child like mind dreams openly, not afraid to express their own opinions and ideas.
All this amazing innocent thinking, wonder and creativity is slowly taken out of the child’s mind in the restrictive formal environment of the classroom and mixing in modern society.
The child is not allowed to express his or her feelings on a subject in class unless they have permission to do so. You even have to ask permission to go to the toilet. And the child risks being laughed at by his or her so called equals and corrected, told off, or in some other form of expression informed that they have things wrong if they say something deemed unacceptable by the school teacher or the conformed classmates.
School kills individuality and imagination. Schools promote “accepted imagination”. So as long as you fit the criteria set by the teacher, school and education board, you will be encouraged.
I was taught early in school to sit in my chair and to shut up. If I asked as innocent genuine question the children laughed or the teacher shamed me in front of everyone. The lessons that we learn in the unnatural school environment is not always from books etc.
The fear of not being socially acceptable terrifies children and they tend to accept and to do things that they never would have done had they not gone to school.
If adults have the wonder, delight in life that small children have then there would be no wars, no hatreds, no starving, no injustices, we would instead be helping out one another and trying to make the best of life in the most simple innocent constructive ways.
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It is worth thinking about.
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All the best from
James M Sandbrook.
Tuesday, 22 September 2015, 12:59:52 PM.