Seeing the World Through a Child’s Eyes (Once Again)

Yangon, Myanmar

I believe that children, being that much less exposed to and therefore tainted by societal norms, are that much closer to real humans, as it were, and spending time with them is almost like a looking-glass to what lies within.

A couple of my friends are primary school teachers and when we meet up I always ask them to recite some of the funny things they’ve heard the teenyboppers say in their class. I’m always bound to laugh. If you want the truth, kids will tell you it without hesitation and often with beautiful precision. Don’t ask your partner if you’ve put on weight, just ask a child for the cold, harsh reality. An adult will only respond according to the outcome.

I didn’t always like being around children, I felt like I couldn’t relate to them, but that all changed when I had to take a kindergarten class in China. Apart from being terribly cute,  they were all refreshingly unlike each another. Immediately they made me smile. Whilst one of them was wetting themselves in the corner (Chinese babies and children up to the age of 5 or 6 wear split pants so you know pretty soon when they’ve had a little accident) another would be singing along perfectly to Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. And after each class they would run around and jump and clap, hugging, laughing at and touching whatever made them curious. Just watching them made me feel like a kid again, revelling in their unreserved movements.

Kids say and do all kinds of unexpected and delightful things because they have absolutely no filter, this filter or whatever you want to call it – screen, guard, defence – is only something that develops once we become more aware of our surroundings and how we should react to it in order to ‘fit in’.

Why are we so obsessed about fitting in? Why do we care so much about what the neighbours will think? Children spend so much time learning from adults; it’s about time adults learned a thing or two from children. It shouldn’t be so difficult; after all, we used to be one once upon a time.

Small children don’t hate, fear, hold prejudices, or kill, these are all traits learned from adults. We pollute their innocent little minds with our own diseases, and because children are impressionable and have not yet developed a true sense of self, or know right from wrong, they depend on adults to acquire knowledge to feed their inquisitive and beautiful minds. That is where the problem lies. So many adults don’t know what’s right from wrong, or if they do they don’t give two hoots about it.

The great threat of childhood corruption is nothing new. William Blake prophesied about it long ago in Songs of Innocence and of Experience, but the problem has gotten worse. Childhood now seems like a lost idyll. The computer screen has replaced the local park and that’s one of the great losses of the Modern Child.

The local park is where we made our friends. It’s where we’d climb, run, skip and where our limbs became strong and agile. It’s where we’d get lost in Mature Nature, poking frog spawn and hooking a net onto a stick to go fishing. It was our earliest form of travelling to somewhere new in the world.

That’s why I want to travel and live my life like a child. Not the child in front of the computer screen, I mean the child that still plays in the local park; I want to live like I haven’t yet been affected by societal norms.

Of course I have responsibilities and I have already been shaped by society in many ways, I’m not saying that’s always a bad thing – it would be incorrect to say otherwise. There are adult traits such as awareness that plays a large part in survival. But being honest, adventurous, curious, and being free of prejudice are essentially childhood traits.

I really believe that to be the best people we can be, and to be the best sort of traveller, we have to try living more through the eyes of a child (we can talk about how we’ll save the Modern Child later), back to a time in our life when everything held so much wonder, and possibility, to a time when we didn’t judge people on the colour of their skin, religion, wealth or ethnic background.

Going back to childhood is like entering a space of limitless imagination where anything goes.

Are you with me?

Let’s be adult children.

the culture map blog

Hi, I'm Shing

Welcome to The Culture Map, a place where I share my travel guides, adventurous tales, and capture the inspiring diversity of our world.

8 Responses

  1. What a lovely text! It’s so true! Although, children can be brutally honest and vicious towards each other sometimes! I feel there is a lot more cold hearted bullying and teasing amongst children than adults!

  2. This is so heartwarming, it throws me back during those days when everything seems magical. I think it’s an understatement to call you a great writer. Thank you for this.

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