The Beauty of Youth

My 3 year old niece sat in my arms today and under candlelight she cried and cried and cried some more for her grandma….it broke my heart. I recited the usual comforting words and at a point was perplexed as to why she couldn’t understand that crying right now…for this reason….was senseless. A half hour later when her tears still had not subsided and having realized that all she really wants was her grandma I decided to let her cry…I told her that though grandma wasn’t around right now she could rest in my bosom and cry till the cows came home…..she did. I rubbed her back and wooed her to sleep with a calming repeated “huussssh”…she fell asleep with tear stained eyes and I wished she didn’t have to go through this again, but I knew the next visit would evoke the same reaction.

I started to think about the carefree nature of children and their ability to hurt like the world was coming to an end in one moment and the uncanny way that a moment or two later all would be made well and it would be as if nothing had troubled their little minds and sensibilities just a second before The resilience of children, I thought, how I envy them. This is the beauty of youth…..do you ever notice that only children skip? As adults it seems we are so burdened by life that the release of self required to loosely dangle our limbs in a skipping jaunt is too much for us…..how sad.

Its amazing how when we are young we are so anxious to be adults and when we are finally grown we realise that it’s a lot more work than we bargained for, so we spend our lives wishing we were young again. When one is young mistakes made don’t seem so great, life doesn’t wreak havoc with our emotions and we bounce back quicker from our various states. When we are young, adults rehearse the typical platitudes which create in our minds the knowledge that we have a lifetime ahead to forget, to heal, to recover…..and we revel in the fact that we always get a “do over”.

If only we could recognise that it’s not that we don’t get opportunities to right previous wrongs, it’s that we refuse to approach our lives as a process. A process in which time is a critical element for success, a process in which human nature takes a back seat and consciousness of and belief in the comfort we give to the young in this life is received absolutely. Instead we bury ourselves in thoughts of situations that could have gone better, what ifs, woulda, shoulda, couldas and a complete inability to let things go, let things be and relent to the superior power guiding our lives.

In effect therefore, we become blockades to the process of living not recognising that this life is all we have….there is no second chance to do things better, we don’t get a do over so we take the chances we need to take, we suffer great losses but in the end we are strengthened for the next challenge and so life goes. Yes, we could all stand at the crossroads waiting for someone to take the decision for us to take a particular path, but where’s the fun in that? we would be cheating…. The challenge is to be aware and understand and know that life is much better when you live it yourself.