Friday, December 21, 2012

The Child Inside

Today marks one week from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. This morning there was a moment of silence held, nationally, at 9:30AM. I participated, from my home, while watching Connecticut broadcast on the news. Shortly after the ceremony, I posted this to my Facebook timeline (you can click the image to make it large, if you need to):
I can't remember a time in my life when I have not seen the beauty in children, or their great example.

I'm writing about this today because my instructions in my Learn to Meditate "class" today brought me right back to this personal perspective of the world once again. Today's meditation is instruction on how to meditate in a crowd of many people. The instructor said to sit still and quietly observe each person in the crowd, but to think of them as angels, as goodness, as another piece of the divine spirit.

In my own way, I do this all of the time (I had no idea I was meditating!). When I am amidst a group of people, like on a bus, for instance, I try to imagine each person as they were as a child. I try to see their innocence. I also do this whenever someone upsets me, or if I am tempted to call someone "evil", because I do not believe that anyone ever starts out evil. This often leads me to the same question, "What happened to this person?" The answer is usually other people happened to this person.

So, after my meditation I am left thinking that I don't want people to just take a moment during the holiday to live like a child, but I also want people to treat each other like they would treat a child. Now, of course, I am not suggesting that we all start patronizing each other, or helping each other out at the potty! What I am suggesting is that we smile at one another, we expect nothing from each other, we are extra understanding in the face of mistakes made, impoliteness and ignorance, we teach each other, we share and care. The thing is not to see each other as children now, but to remember that every person was once a beautiful child and that every single one of us still has that small child inside of us.

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