The mind of a child.

The school year has wound to a close. The page has turned on another chapter in the lives of my children. Each year holds the promise of new things to learn, fresh ideas to be formed. As the year unfolded they grew and matured and acquired new knowledge as only children can do, with their minds open and hearts exposed.

Oh, how I wish I had the naivete of a child again; when everything was so new and fresh and had such potential. For me the lessons are sometimes hard won. I find that I get stuck in a place of stagnancy more often than I would like.

Somewhere along the line as we grow up we learn to close ourselves off from the naked openness with which we are born. Little by little things happen in our lives that chip away at our unprotected psyche. We become indeed a shell of the person we were born as. While we are being filled up with all those good things like learning to master new skills such as walking, talking and communing with the world around us; it leaves us open.

It is in this open state that the negative rubbish enters our brain. The hurts, letdowns and defeats creep in and threaten to overtake our minds to the point where we forget what it is like to be unrestricted and free. However, the mind is a wonderful thing. We can still access the part of our brain that remembers what it was like to be a child and to have the innocence of youth. We need only to retrieve those memories and put them into the forefront of our minds. Then they can be used to open the door to the compartment we have closed ourselves into to avoid being disappointed.

It takes some practice and some concentration and repetition, but that childlike freshness can again be the force that drives us. We can once again open ourselves up to newfangled ideas and novel concepts. What a phenomenal adventure that would be. I think I am going to try it.