Kids are awesome.
They are innocent, tiny, adorable, caricatures of the people they will one day become. I say “innocent” not because they never do “bad” things, but because up till a certain age, “bad” isn’t their motive. They don’t hate. They don’t understand much of anything.
Most importantly, they say all kinds of crazy stuff.
This makes sense because they really haven’t developed any filters yet. If it pops into their heads with enough force, it ricochets out of their mouths. It’s often embarrassing (to the parents) which makes it awesome for the rest of us.
Parents to friends of parents: “Ya, Suzy/Sally/Molly/Tabitha is going to start riding lessons next week. She’s really been on this kick about horses and has been begging us to let her try.”
Friends of parents: “That sounds like fun. What do you think brought that on?”
Parents: “Who knows. We just hope she takes it seriously.”
Suzy/Sally/etc: “I saw mommy pretending to ride a horse on daddy in bed, and I like horses. I want to have fun like mommy.”
This is the point when the yelling and laughing starts, and mommy and daddy start talking to therapists.
Kids don’t understand “inappropriate.” And for those of us who find it funny, we are sort of “fine” with that.
But I think there is something in there worth looking at. They will say stuff that is not well thought through, but it isn’t usually out of malice. I know, some kids can be mean. But most kids are not.
They think they are being friendly, or intelligent, or honest, or helpful. Or funny, even if they don’t understand why it was funny.
Often they are simply curious.
I remember going to the doctor as a little kid. I don’t know how old I was, but definitely before I entered school. My pediatrician was a really nice older gentleman who was always friendly. He would talk to me and ask me questions like doctors do. One day I had a question for him.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, Tony, what is it?”
“How come your teeth are green?”
He started laughing profoundly. My mother was considerably less amused. She was so embarrassed and kept apologizing for what I had said, making me also apologize.
I remember not having any idea why I was apologizing or why I was now “in trouble.” (I really wasn’t.)
It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question. The dude had some discolored teeth. He was a doctor. Weren’t doctors in better shape than the rest of us? Or so the logic went. His teeth should be much better than mine, but they are not. I bet the reason might be interesting or funny.
Or so the logic continued.
Later on we learn that there is something called “tact” and “consideration”.
Perhaps a better term would be “compassion.”
Compassion can manifest in lots of different ways. How we act, what we say, how we say it, whether we do or say anything at all… so many different things are guided by compassion or the lack of it.
The same kid who “rudely” asked about the green teeth (ahem) was also the same kid who used to get so upset with other kids when they would step on ants. It seemed so wrong and unkind. What did the ants do to them? The ants had a right to roam around the grass and travel across the sidewalk. Leave them alone.
Many years later, married and grown, I decimated countless ants in the “Great Ant Wars of 2006-2010”.
So many ants died by my hand. And spray bottle. And ant trap. And poison. The little guys wouldn’t stay out of my home! They came in by the dozens. Sometimes hundreds. Nothing we did helped for years, till finally we started finding the external source and basically doing everything all at once and committing genocide. (Antocide?) They still kept coming, but they didn’t make alive into the house.
It was so bad.
They were so persistent that I decided that they were magical teleporting ants. They would just appear. In my living room, kitchen, pantry, bedroom… I suddenly decided my compassion for the ants was outweighed by my revulsion of having them in… everything.
I still felt bad. I remember being so frustrated one day at about 6am when my wife woke me up as she was leaving for work to tell me that they had invaded our everything in the middle of the night.
They were mostly all over our kitchen pantry as they had wandered in through a vent in the middle of the house, trekked across the floor, into the kitchen, into the pantry, out of the pantry, and out the front door. Thousands of them.
I was so frustrated as I was trying to spray, wipe, sweep, vacuum, etc., that I started yelling at them. “Why won’t you just stay outside?!? I will leave you alone if you just stop coming in my home!! What is wrong with you?!?”
I had been very sick, hadn’t slept well, probably medicated, and rational thought wasn’t winning.
I suddenly had zero compassion.
But it’s ants, right? Who cares about ants?
That’s the thing about true compassion. It has no boundaries or end.
In all of our change and growth and self reflection and striving, if it is devoid of compassion, it’s all meaningless.
I’ve seen people get so caught up in their “personal growth journey”, that they completely ignore the people around them. People like their spouses and children. It’s a self-centered, selfish spiraling of “me me me everything is about me.” My problems, my needs, my journey, my path. It’s not selfless at all.
In all of our strivings, we can never forget our context and environment. The life we live and the people around us. They didn’t stop mattering simply because we had an epiphany.
We aren’t little kids who don’t understand the difference. We aren’t innocent and ignorant. It’s funny when they don’t get it, it’s not funny when we don’t.
They aren’t nuisances like insect invaders. Simple annoyances to be eradicated in singular fashion.
If our growth and change harms the people around us, perhaps we should question if our path is a good one.
In the process of growth, improvement, journey, spirit, enlightenment, call it what you will… we must walk our path in the middle of our life. We’ve made choices. Many of which are irreversible. We have to live with them. And they weren’t all bad choices. We can’t turn our good choices into bad ones. The people we love and who love us, well, we need to still love them and be there for them. We can’t alienate or isolate them for the sake of an “easier outlook.”
I realize that sounds pretty stupid to most of you. Perhaps you are thinking “that doesn’t happen.” But believe me when I tell you that it does. More often than anyone would like to admit. People reinvent themselves, or renovate their belief system, and as they jettison their old baggage, they toss out their families with it. Their friends. Their responsibilities.
In the striving for a better way, don’t confuse a fresh start with starting over. One happens within your context. The other happens without it.
One is driven by compassion. By wanting to be a better person for yourself AND for those around you.
The other thinks only of you, damn the consequences.
They can both feel like the right choice, but their motive is completely different.
Compassion is an inseparable part of good character. Where ever you go, and however you change, it should always stay with you. It should drive your choices, not be removed from them. Spur your growth forward, not be absent from your presence.
If what we become is a full grown adult, speaking without compassion and still “stomping ants”, what might that say about us?
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