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Unless you become like a little child.

I have been thinking lately that while cynicism comes very quickly to me, it's not very natural. That is, it's become natural, but I'm uncomfortable with it, and especially uncomfortable with its quickness. I don't like my cynical self. I don't remember it being with me always, and I'd like to return to what once was. I think that's what Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald were always pressing toward in their insistence that childlike innocence was something to prize. It always seemed to me such an odd concept - childlike innocence - as I've never met a child who had any less of the beast in them than I do now. But a lack of cynicism, a generosity of spirit is more akin to children than to adults. It certainly is in my own history, at least. I want to return to that. But I find that becoming like a child, which is actually a divine command, is painfully hard to do. One of the things I'm hoping for, I think, in the children's book group I'm reading through, is to somehow recall that, rekindle it, within myself.
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  1. Laurel's Quill06 March, 2012 16:38

    It's very difficult to "stay" in our inner child very long. I was not happy as a child, and my adult thinking is often colored by the pain I felt as a child. If we don't come to grips with that, we stay cynical...but I love that I keep resisting! Have a great day.

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