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Today's
Meditation:
I
still remember talking to my mom one day about my dad:
"He seems like he never was a kid," I told
her. And I knew, even at the ripe old age of ten or
eleven, that I didn't want to be that way when I grew up.
Children
are merely human beings who haven't been on this planet as
long as adults. They aren't inferior, they aren't
different, they aren't lesser than we adults are--they're
simply younger. Their wants and needs and desires are
just as important as ours are, and the major difference
between adults and kids is simply that the kids are more
vulnerable than the adults because of their age. I
never talk down to a kid because I don't know if we've lived
other lives or not--and that kid might have been an imposing
figure in a previous life.
I
have noticed that kids like being around me, and I believe
it's because of the ways that I treat them. I talk to
them, I listen to them, I take them seriously. I
respond to their questions when they ask me something, and I
really think about the answers. I never want to be
that adult who's "just another adult." And I
never want to see kids as "just kids." I
want to be the adult who listens to them and who takes them
just as seriously as I do the other adults in my life.
Because they truly deserve for me to do so.
Be
the exception. Treat kids as people, as equals, and
you may be shocked by what you learn from them and about
them. They have much to teach, but we adults, in our
arrogance, think that only we have something to teach them,
and that there's no chance that that could work the other
way around. Treat children as young people, and love
them fully. Wasn't it Jesus who said, "The
kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these"?
We can help kids to become the people they were meant to be,
or we can try to control them and make them be people we
want them to be. We can enjoy their company, or we can
see them as problems. Personally, I think we're doing
the world a favor when we allow ourselves to play like and
with them, to talk with them, to accept them as they are,
and to allow them to grow as they're meant to grow.
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