Children carry an innocent and unassuming penchant for revealing “the better angels of our nature” as human beings. Here are a few examples (to which you may add your own insights):
The capacity for empathy, not only between humans, but also between species. This is accompanied by a profound ability to observe qualities, traits, habits and subtle sensitivities in the animal worlds that are instructive glimpses into the variety, value, and sanctity of ALL life on this planet.
World citizenship springs from a deep respect for life. It springs from a love of humankind in all its variety. It does not fear difference or ‘otherness,’ but is intensely curious about it. It wishes to experience and understand others. So, it listens. It listens deeply and quietly inside, with respect and fascination.
The ability to deeply listen, to observe and sense the world around us is magnified in children. Children can be acutely aware of what’s going on around them, especially the subtler realms of feeling and atmosphere. They may struggle to express what they feel, but those who are not shut down or suppressed by the adults around them have much to share, if we would only listen with them.
What’s going on INSIDE is everything. Respectfully entering the inner world of children is key to a natural education. It is a gentle and patient art. It requires, in turn, a deep awareness of one’s own inner life, in neutral detachment, without judgment. Just awareness.
Many children carry the innate ability to communicate with their inner lives, including the brain, the stomach, the hands, the emotional life, the instincts, the nerve life (senses), the muscles and more. Sometimes these are their invisible friends, their companions, from which stories are born and flourish. If it is encouraged and recognized by the grown-ups around them, rather than ignored and dismissed, this grows into a marvelous sense of inner life integrity, inter-connection, and self-awareness. Yes, we contain multitudes. Children live comfortably and without anxiety within these multitudes, within the vastness life presents to us all. The unknown is nothing to fear.
Stress, anxiety and fear however, stem from being separated from one’s inner life and its natural ability to handle the immensity and mystery of the world around us. Humans often think they must control the world around them, rather than harmonize with it. This reduces the world down to what we perceive as manageable and rational. It is a narrowing of range. Again, we are not meant to shrink the universe into us, but to expand into it!
If a child grows up in an atmosphere of violence, whether it’s physical, mental or emotional, fear and stress become continual threats to this inner sanctuary. The contradiction between what is natural, respectful, perceptive and real and the unsafe behavior around them becomes deeply stress inducing.
Children instinctively know we are not alone; that we are inter-connected, inter-dependent lives who carry each other inside us. This is not abstract or academic to children. The immensity of the world around us is not something to cope with, but to embrace. It is not something to put in boxes and neatly compartmentalize. It is not for us to be apart from, but to be a part of!
Uncertainty is near to the heart of being human. False certainties are symptoms of the inability to deal in the unknown or to handle contradiction. One can be uncertain and yet not insecure.
Why then, do we become separated from the natural ‘throughout-ness’ of living? Why do we reduce the immensity of the world to digestible, manageable bits. It seems to lead to all kinds of stress, fragmentation, imbalance and isolation, opening the door to disease of many kinds.
The youngest members of the human tribe show us – It is never too late to change!
World citizenship is a natural consequence of openness, understanding and the simple love of life, all life! It is mirrored by the stewardship we give to our inner worlds, wherein we recognize and hold each other in the strength of sameness.
This book of Sparks is all to do with “inner world citizenship” really, through which true and natural education is EVERYTHING. But even the most enlightened current education models don’t quite touch it, simply because they are conceived in separation rather than integration.
These stories, songs, dances and writings humbly yet bravely spring from varying degrees of integration.
~paz
