When I Was A Child, I Spoke As A Child, I Understood As A Child, I Thought As A Child’. This is a statement about the change in perspective that occurs as we grow older, quoted from The Bible, from 1 Corinthians, 13:11. (New King James Version). This hand-written verse was also a central image used in the film ‘Wings Of Desire’. The second part of the sentence is ‘but when I became a man, I put away childish things’.
As we evaluate our lives at different stages, at times we may lose a sense of direction, and we are encouraged at times like these, by various life coaches and mentors, to recall what we thought about life and ourselves when we were about 6 or 7 years old. What were the dreams we had, then, of the life to come? What visions did we have, for the future? Where are we now, in relation to those dreams?
These are the key questions: Who are we? What is our purpose? Where are we going? Is what we are doing today, going to get us to where we want to be? If not, what can we do to get back on track?
Asking these questions is difficult at times, especially if we feel we have drifted off course, and are currently not living our best life, in alignment with our dreams; but doing so helps us reset our life direction.
The poet Wordsworth made the comment that ‘Heaven lies about us in our infancy.’ In his ‘Intimations Of Immortality’, this statement expresses the need to connect with a powerful sense of childhood wonder:
‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.’
As life unfolds, with its challenges and disenchantments, this sense of divinity and joy directly competes with growing exhaustion and cynicism. As a Romantic poet, intensely believing in the redemptive power of the imagination, Wordsworth in his poem points to the child’s natural and innate hopefulness, optimism and openness to life, and contrasts this with the man-made institutions of education and the harsh lessons of experience which oppress us and make us cynical and callous as adults:
‘Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy...
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six-years’ Darling of a pigmy size! ...
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song’.
There is a project called ‘Little Minds, Strong Values’ currently being developed in Sri Lanka, using songs by Rukshan Perera with lyrics which have embedded values like tolerance, self-worth, and honesty, which hopes to impact children in these formative years, to build the foundations of ethics and moral strength for character development. Through songs and music videos, which are easy to hear, understand and absorb, these ideals can become manifested in action.
We use the term ‘second nature’ to describe positive behaviour which we have learned to develop, and which has now become part of us. But Wordsworth would probably say that this is a return to our true nature: the joyful, essential self which we experienced as our true condition, before we started responding to the frustrations of our dysfunctional society.
I have seen this idea of reconnecting to lost innocence in a famous film sequence in ‘Space Odyssey: 2001’, in presentations at entrepreneurship seminars and leadership academies, and in film, literature, visual art and song. ‘Healing The Inner Child’ is a strong theme in psychotherapy, as the experiences we have as children and our responses to them form our character, through which we then go on to experience the world as adults.
We are impressionable and responsive. Our sensitivity to the world brings us joy as well as sorrow. Our redemptive opportunity is in the power to access that child-state of curiosity, openness and wonder, again, at will. 🤩
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