Through a child’s eyes
I’d like to know how to find the path back to my innocence. I want to go back to the time when neither right nor wrong existed, no prejudice or cynicism, and basically no rules on how to live life.
In a child’s world, you can eat spaghetti in the clumsiest way and people can still find you cute. Fallen M&Ms are still clean before five minutes on the floor, and you can munch a handful like they came from a freshly opened pack. You’re a warrior unafraid of germs and disease. You can run through malls and no one will arrest you for being spontaneous. You can even cry in public when you’re hurt. You’re fragile and vulnerable, and you’re not compelled to hide it.
Children have the sweetest smiles and the happiest dreams because even in their sleep, they’re free of the shackles of judgment and criticism. They soar through the clouds riding unicorns and flying cars, float inside bubbles, and slide down rainbows. Walk on cotton candy lanes, sticking their tongue out for gumdrops and gummy bears. Run up chocolate hills, chasing paper airplanes or flying red and blue kites.
They are never indignant when some dreams can’t come true.
Once upon a childhood, we were free of inhibition and fear of making mistakes and doing the unexpected, free of worry and unmindful of other people’s thoughts on how we should look or act. We didn’t wear mascara and blush-on, but we were the fairest of all when we looked into magic mirrors. We had no iPads and such, but we knew what true happiness was every time we played under the sun. We never stopped asking silly questions because we craved to learn the why’s and how’s of the world. We were astronauts traveling to and from the moon even before spacecraft were launched.
“Impossible” was a meaningless word when we were five or six.
It’s been written and said that when one grows up, one will long to be a child again. I guess I’ve grown enough to miss childhood’s beautiful mysteries. But like death and change, growing up is inevitable. The world changes with each season that passes, and so do perspectives on happiness, love, relationships, and everything in between. Innocence has the purest view of these essential things, so different from the mindset of, say, a 16-year-old who wears Gothic clothes, puts on headphones to shut up the birds chirping around him, and spends all day browsing websites and scrolling down Facebook pages.
What does it take to go back to that time when everything seemed priceless?
If I find the answer, I will take up my canvas and paint. I will paint for the world to see how beautiful life can be when we view things as a child. I will capture it for me not to forget that there will always be a child in me.
Mehfrell P. Javellana, 22, is a board repair specialist at
Teradyne Phils. Ltd. in Lapu-Lapu City.
