The Gift of Children

(Taken from a journal entry dated October 29, 2013 ; Written at UP Sunken Garden at 1 in the afternoon)

I was sitting in the Sunken Garden busy filling out forms and contemplating things which from time to time randomly emerged from the back of my mind when a 3-year-old boy who was playing with his mother ran towards me and stood beside me. As he stood there, he just randomly talked to me with words I could not understand. Then, he pointed to the sky. “Doon, doon!,” he tried telling me.

From the papers, I had to look at the child’s face. I had to shif t my attention from the papers I was filling, from the future I was building was busy building for myself, from the petty things in the present that kept me distracted from the real things in life, towards that little boy’s eyes and simple pre-occupations. I had to look up to his face and up to the sky.

If by chance or by my playful nature I decided to ignore him, might he throw bitter tantrums? Would that break him? Before he befriended me, I wonder if he had second thoughts about approaching me – that “this lady might ignore me”, “she might get mad”, or “she might do something bad to me”. Obviously, these things didn’t cross his mind. Unsurprisingly but wonderfully, this child didn’t care. Nonetheless, out of that childish innocence comes some kind of peace only children have and could give.

If only people can be children forever, but no. This world does not maintain innocence. It ravages men and women. It ravages innocence—and innocent children. But perhaps, maybe, God designed each man and woman to be children once in their lives so that they can experience that peace and purity for at least once in their lives, and be able to step back from their busy, mature, “un-innocent” life with the childhood memories they still have managed to keep in them. Perhaps we all have been children at some point in our lives so that we can also have the chance to disturb those men and women who had been ravaged by time and pains, so that our “childish disturbances on them” might take their busy minds out of the preoccupations they need to battle and weather every single day.

After some minutes, the child finally left me with his mother equally of good-nature as him, bidding me – his new-found friend – a sincere goodbye.

I continued with my busyness and preoccupations then with a slight smile on my face and a much lighter heart. All I needed was that little, simple disturbance -- of a child.

As I watched the little boy play with his mother in that soccer field, I suddenly began scribbling down these very words. I just cannot let disturbances of this sort slip through, undocumented and unpreserved.

I pray that he will grow up to someone strong and happy because this world does not maintain innocence. Everyone is subject to pain and loneliness.

…And everyone is also subject to seasonal disturbances—often unnoticed, divine disturbances—which reminds us that life may be unfair but IT IS BEAUTIFUL. There is always goodness here; Hope is always available.

I had to be disturbed so that I will LOOK UP.

“Doon…Doon!”

****

On my way home, I suddenly came to realize that there is nothing more liberating than taking good care of others despite any [of your self’s] infirmity.