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Today's
quotation:
Children
have a remarkable talent for not taking the adult
world with the
kind of respect that we are so confident it ought
to be given.
To the irritation of authority figures of all sorts,
children expend considerable energy in “clowning around.”
They refuse to appreciate the gravity of our monumental
concerns, while we forget that if we were to become more
like
children our concerns might not be so monumental.
Conrad Hyers
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Today's
Meditation:
Is
it possible that we give our world too much respect?
Is it possible that the things that we deem as serious and
important aren't nearly as serious and important as we've
come to consider them? Our "monumental
concerns" may not be so monumental at all, depending
upon the perspective we choose to look from when we
consider them.
Yes,
we are "confident" that our worlds ought to be
given a great deal of respect, but what does that
mean? How does it help us or anyone associated with
us if we're constantly absorbed by these monumental
concerns and not present in the current moment? What
are we accomplishing if we're so worried about an aspect
of work while we're at home that we neglect our
relationships there? What are we doing to those we
love and, just as importantly, to ourselves?
If
we were to become more like children, our lives would
change significantly. We would tend not to feel the
need to control situations as much as we often do, and we
would let go of things more easily. Of course, these
assumptions presume an idealized kind of child, but we're
old enough and experienced enough to be able to step into
the idealized mold if we so choose. We wouldn't need
to take on a child's self-centeredness and we wouldn't
need to throw temper tantrums and the like to be
children. We would need to adopt the child's
perspective and sense of wonder, and the child's ability
to let things go and let others take care of stuff that
they just don't want to take care of.
Our
concerns are monumental because we make them so.
Their importance is a product of our thoughts and our own
need to categorize, control, and perform. On the day
we die, though, those aren't the criteria upon which most
of us would like to judge ourselves as we look back upon
our lives.
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