Children - Socially Free and Untroubled

I need to admit that I am not one of your typical zealous, pragmatic person who ponders about our future and how it is evolving and the imminent consequences that well befall all those who exist. It’s unclear why I haven’t taken the chance to recognise how drastically our world has turned. When you think about it - nothing’s really working for us. You name it - environmental issues that will inevitably ravage our globe, countries enhancing their nuclear arsenals, terrorism floating around and modern consumerism gradually and remarkably crippling and isolating our society. It feels dire and it feels that there’s a looming sense of closure that awaits us. No intention of making you feel like shit! Hah.

However, not withstanding all of what I’ve said, there are things to be so grateful for. One, of course, is the essence of new life and the beauty of human development. It kind of took me surprise - this sentiment. More specifically, the great opportunity and capacity of children. Even through the observant watching of their development, it’s startling to see how they socially and emotionally grow. This is very deviant from what I wrote in the beginning but I just wanted to make the point that irrespective of the shit that appears to be occurring throughout the course of our lives - we can be grateful of the simple distractions that we encounter.

Recently - on a relatively cold and bleak night after a long day of work, I stood patiently waiting for the bus to arrive. I usually don’t pay much attention to what’s happening around me when I’m flat-out tired and just have only the goal of getting home and dropping dead. Something on this occasion hit me though. Whilst just plainly standing there, I was startled by a child with his mother stand close to the window adjacent to where I was quietly standing. Sorry, I don’t mean to say that I automatically startled when I see a child and their mother! What came next somewhat startled me by the naivete and carefree nature of it. The child began moving and crouching around the window sill and frame and touching the window as if it was the first time he had seen one. He was oblivious to the fact that I was there or even the presence of his mother. What I want to note is the simplicity of it - how this child isn’t afraid of exploring and finding out what is .. what it is.

However juvenile children can appear; they have the utmost freedom to do - while most of their actions are underdeveloped and unconscious/subconscious - whatever they like. On the other hand, adults are knowing of the consequences of the actions; children are not. They are uncontrolled by their social surroundings and social norms that are established at that moment or any moment for that matter. This is why children in themselves hold the largest potential for our future. Although in many of their first years, they have almost no social awareness - psychology literature strongly acknowledges that it is in their later years that the maturation of their general awareness and intellect is built upon the environment they are brought up in. For a person like me who has no psychological education, the merit of that is amazing for me. Because when I look at my nephew, I don’t simply see a child who is overtly just running around, messing about, being a kid; I see a child who is progressing into a world that will create him. We take for granted how fundamentally absorbent children are to the world and through their interactions of it. They eat up what the environment throws at them and this will subsequently formulate the basis of how they are developed. Just by virtue of that is stunning.

I was confounded by why this child stirred up this mental note. I think it’s because as an adult, we are too involved in the rapid nature of our routines that we forget even the smallest things that are happening around us. It’s strange. For all I know, I could’ve waited for the bus, arrived home and went to sleep.

Shortly after, the bus arrived and we treaded slowly onto the bus. I took my seat in the middle of the bus and pulled out my book to read. Momentarily, the mother and child took their seats as well. The kid was in fact in front of me. For a brief moment, I took a chance to look around and was met by the child’s face staring at me. At which he blurted out funny, incoherent phrases and abruptly ended it with laughter. I responded by laughing as well. Again, it just proves the point of how unafraid children are when communicating and interacting with the world. They are unsettled by the social flow of the environment and couldn’t care less what people thought or were doing. I think the beauty of being a child lies in that, or somewhere close to that.

I mentioned as well how children have the potential for refining our future and one video clearly re-iterates their potential for doing so. This is a talk by Ken Robinson at the TEDTalks Conference. He explains how schools are stunting the innate creativity that children possess or for that matter, those who attend schools.

He’s a genius and tops it off by his humour. I think his wit and versatility in his expression in the video says it all, and further reinforcing how creativity works.

I admire one of his well-spoken quotes, addressing the attitudes of children:

“Kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they’ll have a go. Am I right? They’re not frightened of being wrong.”

And it’s true, huh? He also goes on to say that mistakes are so stigmatised that it’s become somewhat epidemic in the working class society. I know that this is supposedly how capitalism works through individualism and the goal to perfection and blah blah blah .. but the point raised is that children are not undermined by this. Their mistakes are flaunted in its absolute entirety and they just don’t care.

It’s magnificient how differentiated how children and adults will react to certain mistakes. Clearly, it is obviously that children don’t understand or recognise the full weight and bearing of their mistakes and thus, cannot perceive their mistakes but more clearly, the apathy that children exhibit strikes me as extraordinary, whilst adults (like us) flinchingly react through self-improvement and error-correction when particular mistakes are unravelled. Man, being a child was fun!

I want to end this by articulating the spontaneity of children in their actions, in their mistakes and in their interactions with us as human beings. Take a look or watch when children are scouting around and enjoying themselves. You will realise the value of such simplicity of a child doing something so profoundly unconventional or innocent. Whatever it is, you cannot but help end up laughing or enjoying the moment.