A NEIGHBOR’S little boy of about six, wide-eyed and still full of wonder, curiously peeped through our cyclone-wired portion of the fence and asked me quite candidly, “Are you fixing your house?” I was at first tempted to mimic his tiny shrill voice by answering him with another question, “Why, is it broken?” However, I merely replied, “Yup,” because, come to think of it, renovation, in a way, is still very much like fixing, too.
As always, the straightforwardness that children possess aplenty provides us with an endless supply of amusement. How they express raw feelings, without the usual society filters, is so unlike that of their more mature but much less domesticated adult counterparts. Perhaps this is also why we’re fond of them, despite the shock value that often comes with it.
At another time, a different neighbor’s kid came by with his nanny and, upon peering through the door, exclaimed flatly that our place was “pangit” or ugly, compared to theirs nearby, which had recently been renovated. Loudly shushed by the nan, I had shushed her back, no worries.
And yet in many other ways, this perspective of children, calling a spade a spade, but expressed with total innocence, is just one of their many superpowers.
This is why, especially today, this unique sense of wonderment, which we all possessed in great quantity once upon a time, comes with a very specific tag: Fragile. As all superpowers go, there are opposing powers which act like kryptonite to weaken or neutralize them… and the most potent of these is the word “NO!”
I must have seen hundreds of children stopped dead in their tracks, merely by the utterance and loud incantation of that one particular word.
The double-whammy effect is likewise most certain once this seemingly magical word is said aloud by a person of authority, such as a parent or a teacher, who subsequently is overly influential in the child’s developing world.
Whenever I encounter such episodes whereby a little person is admonished sharply on the streets or wherever I am at the moment, I am immediately reminded of a Neil deGrasse Tyson interview where he discussed children’s curiosity: “They are experimenting with their environment. Everything is new to them.”
Exploration is key, as most memes are coined, and it is the mold from which we all learn. To derail it has consequences.
Back to my wide-eyed little neighbor asking about me fixing our house, how I wish I had enough time to entertain all his queries. In fact, I sincerely wish for more than that. I wish that, despite thousands of “NO”s and “don’t-do-that”s he will surely encounter during his exploration of the world, I wish the child inside never dies and that his curiosity never wanes.
