Innocence Lost

04.12.2010

I often think about the innocence that’s lost when we become adults. As children, we’re entitled to dream big, often encouraged by adults, and we believe in endless possibilities and in the goodness of people. At what point does that all evaporate? At some point, our hearts become hardened and we become more cynical than when we were younger. We also tend to lose our ability to dream. We become so focused on what’s “practical," so focused on how much money we don’t have or lamenting decisions that we made or didn’t make. It seems that getting older should make us wiser but it seems that it often makes us sadder or more cold-hearted. I suppose having kids would make someone’s heart softer or allow the adult to act silly again for the sake of the child. But what about the ability to dream? Or the notion that there’s good in all people regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion? Children are born innocent and learn certain behavior and beliefs from the adults that raise them or around them. Our own lives and how they shape out, and where we are at the particular point in our lives when we start having children, dictates how we’re going to raise our children.

In other words, if a woman is greatly unhappy with her life when she starts having kids, that unhappiness is going to dictate how she raises her kids. She might take out her anger at herself and her life on her children that, in turn, it will shape the kinds of people they become. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the mother (or parents) who are in a relatively good place in their lives (emotionally, financially, mentally, etc.) and the support they’re able to give their child will shape the person that child becomes. I mean, this isn’t news and is part of basic child psychology. But it seems to me that we think so little of this part of child development and, yet, it’s one of the biggest deciding factors to aid in a child’s development. It’s a little detail that has huge repercussions either way you look at it. I wish people paid more attention to it.