That's Awesome!

Before... and this is the crucial phrase here... before a child's sense of innocence and wonder are crushed, trampled upon, beat to hell and back--via a dawning awareness of some of the harsher realities of the world being handed to them, they are so full of wonder over even the smallest, most trivial of things. The things that we overlook as adults, the things that we take for granted, the things that we have grown accustomed to--if not habituated to--are for children some of the 'coolest things in the world.'

So much is decidedly novel to the child. It means that the capacity for wonder as a child is that much greater than it tends to be for adults; adults who end up going through life as if it were a 'routine' to be habitually re-enacted day after tiresome day. You know, the 'same old same old.'

I think it was some dude named Jesus that said one must become as a 'little child' if one were to know the Kingdom of Heaven. The Zen Buddhist parallel of this is epitomized in the late Suzuki Roshi's 'beginner's mind': where each moment is realized as fresh; where nothing about the world is stale or flat.

And that is the thing, isn't it? The 'world-as-it-is' is never stale or flat. The world is constantly emerging in total and unequivocal freshness. Each moment is raw and naked. It is we, we humans, who become stale and flat in terms of how we perceive--i.e., in what I call the attitudinal stance we take towards each moment. If we are a vibrantly aware of the novelty and freshness of each moment then the world can never be boring, stale, or flat. The world will be seen as singing with life and sex and frivolity--with so many 'cool things' that are for the child within all of us so many reasons to be astounded at the awesomeness of it all.