Children have it right!

Some of us by nature are eternal optimists. Others, I guess are born pessimists. You know, "is the glass half full or half empty?" Certainly life can bog us down. But, like most other things, I think how we respond is up to us. We cannot control what life may hand us, but we can control how we react.

Our learned prejudices have a lot to do with our expectations. As children, we don't have the baggage to expect things to turn out bad. But then, as we grow up and have more and more experiences of the unavoidably unpleasant kind, we get tainted. Then we even begin to make problems where there were none because we expect someone is out to get us.

I came across a wonderful reflection over the weekend in a book called This Is the Day the Lord Has Made by Wilfred Stinissen (Liguori Publications). Here are excerpts from his reflection for September 22:

A child - if it lives in an environment where it is allowed to be itself - has no problems. Children aren't worried about money, food, or clothing....They figure they will always get what they need...

Children live in glorious freedom. Even the smallest, insignificant gift can mean pure bliss for them, because it is received in the present moment. The joy of the present moment is not darkened by worries of a difficult past or a threatening future. Children's ability to be present in the moment means that every moment has a gift to give and that every little occasion of joy is appreciated.

This presence in the moment also means that children make no separation between play and seriousness. Play itself is taken very seriously. They don't perceive mistakes as calamities; they count on forgiveness as self-evidently as they count on daily food.

This lack of worry is lost as we grow up and become "adult".... Life becomes full of "problems"...

I wonder if there is a way to reverse that trend. There's a bumper sticker that was popular in recent times that read "Imagine world peace." The concept was that if individuals imagined peace, they would begin to naturally approach life's hurdles with a greater sense of peace. And when they did so, others would be less irritated and also begin to live with more peacefulness.

Perhaps that could be true for simplicity, innocence and freedom as well. Imagine the world from the perspective of a child - with great confidence. Senator Robert Kennedy once said, "I dream of things that never were, and ask 'why not?'"

I think it's worth a try. Imagine life without problems and see how your day goes. When a stumbling block comes along, remember that its just for the current moment. Before long it will be over. And whatever you do, don't bring yesterday's stumbling blocks into today.