Truth, still small, ever big

A child outrunning the wind exclaimed, "Daddy! Daddy! If you run too fast, you can't tell what's real.  Amazingly, there is great insight in children.  And great innocence.  They carry a wisdom they often live but seldom know."  Mark Nepo writes in "The Book of Awakening" (p.330).

The sentence that strikes a chord in me is, "They carry a wisdom they often live, but seldom know."  We the keepers of children, Know a lot, but at times we lose sight of our wisdom.  As an adult you have to "know" if a child is hungry they need food.  You need to know how to get the food, how to hold down a job to pay for the food.  These all function for the benefit of all.  But don't forget the still small wisdom that comes naturally to our children.  "Neruda writes in the poem Poetry, " I wrote the first faint line, pure non-sense, pure wisdom.  My eyes were blind, and something started in my soul."

The children may not "know"; they may not cognitively understand, or be able to explain it to you.  BUT they Are their experience.  There is not such a divide between what they experience and how they react, as we grow to hold as adults.  As adults, we lean back over the divide to try to understand our children.  (Fair enough, with our experience and in an attempt to see the world through their eyes, we may need to lean in, bend backwards, see it from their angle.)  But remember, they hold wisdom we have often lost sight of.  Still small, ever big.  They are truth.  They are not separated from their truth as we have been conditioned to do (for all our practical purposes.)  Celebrate the authenticity of your child, allow a spark in your soul when you hear their truth.  We can all learn from each other here.

Thank you Mark Nepo for sharing your life's work in these pages.  : )
Love,
Alisha