Children’s Eyes

May 21, 2014

Written by Marykate OMalley, mother of three wonderful children, Gladwyne PA

This is how an adult walks – deliberate steps, gaze looking ahead, occasionally glancing at phone. Adults walk towards work, and action and something they need to do, somewhere they need to be.

This is how a child walks – they march, then skip, they will start to run zig zag and climb a stone wall or stoop to watch an ant walking across the ledge of a branch.

This is what the adult will say – hurry up, we are running late, let’s keep moving.

This is what the child will say – but Mom, look at the ant! It is holding a piece of food larger than it’s whole body!

And suddenly a snapshot of all the tiny miracles around us, that only children notice.

You must be silent and still to notice beauty. And while I am rushing, and juggling, and packing us to move from soccer to lacrosse to lunch to the market I am reminded over and over to consider the life that is swirling around me. The clouds are moving across the sky, the wind is caressing each blade of grass and everywhere there is life.

To see life as a child sees it – the human like way a squirrel holds and eats an acorn, the shimmer and rustle of the weeping willow branches, the dark silhouette of trees against an evening sky. They know what Einstein said to be true – “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle”. A child can only consider the miraculous, they are wired for beauty. My goal? To see the world as they do, through their perceptive and knowing eyes.