It happened the other day. I was having the habitual fast-paced walk that is currently my sport of choice (remind me to recover my skates one of these days), when my way got obstructed by a family group. In a street that was very steep and narrow, a woman with two kids were occupying the whole sidewalk as they discussed their own family matters, oblivious of any living form outside their closed unit.
Stepping into the road was risky, so I decided to take it easy until the end of the street and slowed down for a while. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, I had nothing to do for a couple of hours, I had just watched a beautiful film, everything was alright.
I then noticed that one of the kids called his brother, pointing at the same time at something on the other side of the street. I didn’t turn to see what it was because I wasn’t very interested and, besides, it felt disturbing for their intimacy (even though they, on their side, were obstructing my way).
But after a couple of seconds, the situation repeated itself: the kid called again his brother, with that seriousness that kids sometimes show, and pointed again at the same place. His brother gazed obediently at the spot, his face filled with intense concentration.
This time I could not resist and turned my head to see what could be that astonishing. But I got disappointed: there was nothing but a dull building, a sort of official military headquarters of some kind, with nothing relevant in it. All there was was a plain brick wall and a tiny watcher tower, empty at the moment. I turned my head again and kept on walking, somewhat intrigued. At the top of the street, we parted.
It took me some time to understand the event under the right light. It suddenly occurred to me that they were kids and thus, just in the same way as they were healthier than me, more resistant than me, and they breathed better than I do, they saw more than I did. It’s just like cats, when they suddenly keep staring at a blank point in the air: what’s in there for them? We’ll never know.
In “Emotional Intelligence”, Daniel Goleman explains that the amount of neurons in a baby’s brain doubles the amount he has during his adult life (that decrease is not relevant for functionality, due to the way in which brain works). It is due to a process called “pruning”, which starts short after birth. In short, it works like this: those neural areas that are exercised, privileged, will survive. The others won’t. A baby is a pure density of possibilities. But to make some of those possibilities real, many others must be wasted. Nature needs a direction. (That’s why the first months of life are so important. The treatment received during that period is not going to configure the journey, but the voyager itself.)
A kid has still much more possibilities available than any of us. Children do see more than we do. Maybe they do not know what to do with all that richness, but their perception is certainly richer than an adult’s. And adults, on their side, have the experience, more things seen and assimilated, and the responsibility to guide those plentiful possibilities of children in an “impartial” way (and not, as we often still see, to take advantage of what they don’t know to embarrass and overwhelm them). Children are nature before contamination, life right after removing the wrapper. The “I rule/you obey” paradigm has proven to be simplistic, and no longer works. “Parent” and “Child” are useful categories, but sometimes we should just get rid of them for a minute, just to remember that it’s all about human beings here, and it certainly works in both directions: because a kid can be your teacher in so many many ways.
Do you have children? What have you learned from them?
Related posts:
Experiences in Fatherhood
“May you have a good life”
Hemispheres at war
Playing death
Taking care of oneself