Little Kid Logic

My grandparents lived in Memphis when I was a little kid. We would visit them from time to time, and I remember asking my parents if every large house belonged to Elvis. In my little brain, I somehow knew he lived in Memphis, but I didn’t realize Collierville was not Graceland. I see a large house—BAM: “Mom, does Elvis live there?”

There was a sense of wonder and curiosity. Naiveté. Innocence.

When do we lose that?

If you people-watch or watch news or are awake, you can see all kinds of things, but I’d probably say innocence and wonder aren’t up there on the top of the list. We have people celebrating deaths but not in the Dolly way. We easily seem to hate without taking time to listen or understand or get to know. There is a ton of emotion without connection. We say we won’t peace but speak hate. We say we want unity, but that could be a misnomer for “my way.” And, I say “we,” and what I’m really talking about is the American lens of “we.”

When I was a little kid, I had a lot of innocence and wonder. I had little kid fears. My biggest fears about which I’ve written previously were Bigfoot and the devil. I played imaginatively. I sweated outside. I loved. When did that change? My guess is sometime around the time I was abused at or around age 3.

My world shifted. My ideals changed. My safety and trust became much different. For years, that led to internal hatred, external anger, lots of uncolorful words, outbursts, and casual tossing around the word “hate.” My immediate world changed as well. All the things I just mentioned shrunk even more.

There eventually became a keen loneliness, which drove so much of these things.

All that to say, I get the use of the word “hate.” I’ve used it. I use it occasionally in sports or in certain circumstances.

But, you know what? I don’t feel that like I used to. The intensity of that word was never really truly that word in retrospect. It was definitely a strong dislike, something to fill a space often in a space where nobody asked how I felt or thought about it anyway.

A buddy and I have talked about how grateful to God we are that there was no social media growing up when we did. Additionally, the media was not as prevalent or pervasive. In other words, I think the world still had some little kid logic back then.

Does it now?

I see glimpses. In my opinion, it seems like everyone has a voice, wants to be heard ,or maybe better yet, be seen. There are lots of avenues. I mean, you, the lone reader or two, are reading this on a blog. While I don’t personally view myself as trying to be seen or heard, one could make the argument.

Imagine, though, if the Americanized world looked imaginatively, curiously, with wonder and concern. How different would that be? How different would our inner worlds be? And if our inner worlds became filled with little kid logic, how powerful would that be for the global world?

Let’s change the world through little kid logic.

#Faith #Hope #Love #eyesofachild #Jesus #curiosity #wonder #imagination #changeyourself #changetheworld #nohate #justlove