By Mehek Rohira:
Ever looked into a little child’s enormous button like eyes? Isn’t it a wonderful feeling? Well, I’ve been spending the past few days babysitting my neighbor’s kid and have realized I have a lot to learn from her. Those tiny little tots find beauty in everything. This little child looks at the television and stares at it with awe like it’s the most beautiful thing she’s seen. She’s excited at even the smallest of things. A simple clap of my hand would suffice for her to burst into laughter. Always smiling, she never fails to amuse me. She runs into my arms screaming ‘Didi didi’, wanting me to swing her around in circles, as if she were on a merry go round.
She trots around the house and falls, and the next moment she’s up laughing and smiling again. Isn’t that how we should be in life? We fall, but it takes us infinite moments to get up. And laughing about it later? No, that’s something we never do. She has that spark in her eye, that dazzling smile which she gives to every person she meets. Anything and everything fascinates her. She’s inquisitive and follows me around wherever I go, imitating every action and word that I say.
It’s pretty amazing, in fact not just amazing, it’s magical, the way she walks around laughing and running, the way she can imbibe so much so quickly, the way she speaks in that broken voice, and most of all the happiness she radiates around her. Don’t we have so much to learn from a little child like her? Rarely in our everyday lives are we excited by ordinary things, rarely are we fascinated, rarely do we have the urge to learn new things, we just exist. If only we could be that child again who is ecstatic, who is bustling with happiness, who is in awe of the world. We think we have so much to teach the children; we have to teach them how to grow up, how to behave, how to speak, how to live in this world, pass on our experiences to them, but do we really? It’s them who have to teach us. It’s we who have to learn from them. It’s us who have to be forever smiling, who have to have that fire in us, the way they do. Those little children have much more to teach us about life and happiness than we ever can to them.
The next time that you need some inspiration, don’t watch some sad movie, or a marathon of TED talks, you can find inspiration in the talks of a 2 and a half year old (you probably won’t even understand a lot of what the child says), in the way they trot around and fall, the way their eyes light up, you can be love-struck by them, and maybe you’ll start believing in magic again, even if just for a moment.