(Image: Retrospect by Ania Tomicka)

From the Mouth of Babes: The Truth Our Children See.

It is a very odd notion that we believe wisdom comes with age. Although it is true that experience comes with age and experience comes with its own knowledge, it is also true that we can often grow jaded with experience. We can end up viewing life through ‘grey tinted’ glasses. What we experience throughout our lives can become our ‘Truth’ and in turn our ‘Truth’ can tend to colour how we view anything (and everything) else we experience. The lense of our ‘Truth’ can distort life. This distortion often becomes so deeply ingrained that we are unable to see life in any other way. We can lose wonder and awe. Because we can become so caught up in the regrets of our past or the worries of our futures, we can lose the ability to see just how marvellous life can be.

I truly believe that there is a form of wisdom that belongs entirely to those who are taking their first steps through life. Those who are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. This wisdom comes naturally to those whose eyes are still blinking with wonderment and excitement at new experiences. This discernment about the Truth can often be found in those who are still innocent to the pitfalls and the injustices of life, those whose backs are not yet bent under the burden of heartache, loss or hurt. They see with fresh eyes and their judgement is not clouded by how things ‘should be’ or ‘have always been’.

Two days ago my nine-year-old daughter wrote a story. She was very proud as she read it aloud to me. She was not at all concerned about any spelling mistakes, any grammatical errors or whether she would stumble over her words. This piece was something she had been working hard on and she was proud of it. After she had read it to me I held her close. I told her how much I had enjoyed the story and how hard I knew she must have worked on it. Silently I smiled to myself and remembered how wise our babes can be. In fact I decided I would (with her permission) share it because it held within it such a beautiful nugget of Truth that I felt it really should be shared.

So I now share with you the wise words of a small girl who still views the world without any jaded lenses of distorted Truth – a girl who can see how life really can be:

Once upon a dream there was a family. A family that didn’t believe in anything but dullness. Not even colour delighted them! You could tell them a joke and they wouldn’t laugh! You could dress up silly but you couldn’t catch a smile! So they ended up with no friends. Until one sunny day when the sky had no clouds, the two children decided they would go out on the bikes that they got last Christmas. Strangely, soon enough the colour came back to them, all the different colour houses became bright and beautiful! And so they rode all day hoping that the colour would never leave. And it didn’t.

In the blink of an eye day became night so the children went home to have their dinner and to tell their parents all about it.

“It’s so beautiful – right now we could believe we could fly!” They said.

“Don’t become attached to it. Things like that never last.” Answered the parents.

But it did!

And over time the children started to believe in more and more things! It had come that their imagination had taken over so they could do anything! Sadly their parents had to do something, if they also wanted to be the same. They could never have dreamt of their children doing everything they wanted. You see, the parents did have colour once when they were children but their own parents never approved of it so they stopped doing anything they liked doing.

Time passed and the parents became old and still didn’t have any colour until…

One day they started to believe again. They started to do things old grannies and grandpas would never hope to do and that is to run. They did! They ran and ran and suddenly everything came back to them again!

So if you ever run out of happiness then just imagine things you would dream to do. And do them…

Then you will find your happiness will come back to you!

The end.