Learning from children

HAVE you seen children play? All of us do, at one time or another. Children play with an abandonment that can only be gotten from their innocence. Toddlers laugh and smile at the slighest gentle teasing.
Children's laughter is like the ringing of chimes during a windy day. It creates a freshness that we adults have forgotten while we were on the road to adulthood. We have lost our innocence and hence our ability to be "like children again".
To be like children again doesn't mean that we should lapse into child-like behaviour but more of wide-eyed, innocent curiosity. Happy the person who knows how to look at ordinary things with a fresh pair of eyes.
You notice that children never judge. It's because they don't know how to. If they are pushed into a corner, they just cry. We adults react in a different way. We either get angry or we will start plotting vengeance.
The next time, you go to a children's playground, be sure to watch the children at play very carefully. They are oblivious to time, they do not care about the condition of their clothes. They often forget that it's time to eat and they are totally absorbed in their own activity.
Children respond quite readily to kindness, love and compassion because it's their kind of world. Children can sense sincerity and they have a strong intuition for friendliness.
Adults can learn to "let go" from the tiny tots. Most of the time, we take things too seriously. We really must learn to let go. We are afraid of what people think of us. We are forever on guard against gossip or bad publicity.
Children never care for these unimportant intangibles. It doesn't not affect them in the least bit because they are too busy climbing up the see-saw.
When children are hungry, they just run to the kitchen to find anything edible. Adults want to choose the place, easy parking and cuisine that suits their palate.
As big people, we are quite a bunch of fuss-pots.
We should be like children. We have to recapture our innocence. We have to regain the world of wonders that is devoid of the pretensions that currently envelop the adult world like a shroud.
We have to learn to see the world, society and people through the eyes of childen. When we learn to think like a child and react like a children on important things, we would begin the process of finding out the real purpose of our existence.
Is it not said 2,000 years ago that "unless ye be like children, the gates of heaven shalt not be opened unto you".
Have you not heard the line: "Sleep like a baby!" Only an infant can drop off to sleep the moment his/her head hits the pillow. Thus, it is imperative that we be like children. If there are no impure thoughts in our head nor grudges in our hearts, we will have no worries and our lives will be filled with joy everyday and hour on hour.
This world needs more people with child-like behaviour, not childish adults. There's a huge difference between the two. Truly, unless we sit down and relearn to behave like children on the important stuff, sorrow and misery will continue to dog our heels.