Sunday, September 5, 2010

What I have learnt from children

Its funny how we want to be so not 12 going on 13 when we find our first crush( or when our first crush finds us). We want to get out of our ugly pupas and become beautiful butterflies. We consciously evolve our language skills in order to be taken seriously, dress in colours and clothes that can pass us for a college goer at 16....with years of trying to sound serious we lose our fun side seriously.
I have always been amazed about the way adults and children smile in photographs? The difference always lies in their eyes. We can always argue this point as adults take in so many things in life and children dont have the brunt of life in their faces. As I see it, there's just this one thing - the ability to smile from your heart irrespective of where you are, who is with you, what troubles you and what is left undone. Children have that ability to laugh with gay abandon even in the middle of tears and reprimand. It comes from inner peace and the ability to love oneself with all you have in you.
In the mundanity and humdrum of lives filled with something to do always, learning to stop once in a while and smile is not such a bad thing. There are those small joys of life that we all have as children, and as teenagers. Teaching our children to have fun while they remain in responsibility is a very good thing in life. The only way they can learn not to take themselves too seriously is from us and through us.
Keeping the child in me alive and well is serious work. It takes constant effort to stay chin up and live wholly everyday. It takes a constant cultivation of a right attitude. It takes brute determination on bad days look above the circumstances of the day and only look forward to the morrow's blue skies.
Life is all about the journey not the destination. Most of us may never be movers or shakers but we can always move and groove even with two left feet. Life is nothing but love, laughter and letting go of ego. So smile cos you never know who is falling for it ;)