It is clear that children have certain perceptions of human nature innately naïve and perhaps stabilized by the sanitary environment their guardians instinctively create for them. A child’s fear revolves around objects in his life whose loss create the largest void; a child would more readily fear the loss of his mother or comfort object then, let’s say, the possibility of not being adequately provided for in the near future. His vision to a surrounding environment will find limits within the confines of his guardian’s choosing. If a parent has lost her job, she won’t make it a point to convey the gravity of such a situation to her child lest she burden him with something beyond his capacity of endurance.
As the child grows, it is quite fruitless and impossible to keep the confines of real world issues from his notion and he will learn to adapt to new hardships. As adults, humans are expected to have developed a mature capacity for enduring most commonplace trials and spontaneous misgivings. With each gradual milestone of maturity throughout adolescence and adulthood, the constricted yet visceral POV of a child has been replaced with an all-encompassing mental vision tainted by perceptions of true sorrow, malice, and anxiety. True hardship gains ground and innocence has been lost.
I often find that many I know, myself included, will inevitably revert to childhood mentality when presented with moments of extreme fear; the fact is, although adults are capable of protecting themselves emotionally, there come times when a greater protection and comfort is wanted. During recent hardships, I have found solace in my childhood home, in the company of my parents. People will identify their childhood surroundings with the protection they were afforded when young and, even as adults, can revert back to idolizing those childhood comforts once more. A desire to find an inner child, the innocence once lost to the grave reality of adulthood, is not only stronger but can affect adult perceptions of dire situations. Last week I witnessed someone’s cruel nature towards another, and instinctively felt confused. Why would anyone be cruel to another, or cause suffering when no gain is to be found? When I experience the cruelty and mean spirit of others, I can only remember how safe I felt from these dark marks of maturity in the comfort of my parents, my childhood protectors. Where were they now to prevent such things from happening? Even so, as adults, we realize human nature is ugly at times, and we can understand that some people choose not to exercise kindness. If all adults could revert back to innocence of childhood, would there be any cruelty left to fear? Probably not, but with the weathered experience of our adolescence and adult years, it’s impossible to convert the inner mechanisms of our ethics to the unassumingness of childhood morality. This makes the random glimpses through the eyes of our childhoods even more valuable and yields a necessity to treasure and learn from them.
