Perspectives change from person to person. One object that a person might love is the same object that another person hates. The same thing goes for ideas, philosophies, religion and different policies. I’ve noticed that as we get older, our perspective tends to change with our age group. For example, many people in my age pool are college students who are stooping into debt. This fact, just this one, can be the variable of a lot of things. The fact that we are in college naturally tags along with self-discovery, experimentation, studying new views and evolving too. The fact that we are in debt tags along with most college students starting to form idealistic views and leaning to obtain a more liberal perspective on economics and social views.
As we get older, we tend to change our worldview into something complicated and tainted as opposed to a child’s worldview, which is pure and simple. I talked to two little girls earlier today, one being my eight-year old sister Brandi, and the other being my friend’s four-year old niece Kiera. I asked both, “What do you think of the world?” Both had very simplistic answers such as, “good” or “bad.” As we get older, we see things different; a complexity of gray color and confusion. We start to feel sympathetic towards some and stone-cold to others. Our child-like way of seeing the world is poisoned by traumatic events such as war or family trauma. Our pure perspective slowly starts to degenerate to a suspicious numbness to the rest of the world.
Brandi sees people as naturally good and equal. Individuals grow to see others as inferior and second to their own needs and wants. She believes that the government takes care of us, and that the best way to improve the world is to be kind to her friends. We come to realize that the government is a skewed system, and most of us come to believe the world can be solved with money and dominance. Kiera wants the world to teach the “bad people how to be better at being good." As opposed to us, who see people who wrong us deserving of punishment and disdain.
I look at kids, and I see how pure and simple they look at life, and it’s a beautiful thing. Of course, we can never go back to that. How could we? But, there is something to learn from a kid’s perspective. They don’t take race, gender, sexual orientation, or background into consideration when they talk about people, they just talk about people as a whole. They look at the world in such a blissfully ignorant way and see all of the good things that most of us fail to remember.
When I am old and I look at the world, I don’t want to see the negative things that often cloud all the light and beauty, but I want to see the good and the hope that children see. We can’t take back all of the things we know about the world, that people are often selfish and mean, that most of our lives are tainted by grief and disappointment, and that things don’t always work out for the best. I’m not saying to ignore any of these facts. But, it is the light and love that come from a kid’s heart that allows us to get past the dark parts of the world and to see the good.
