Secrets Kids Know...That Adults Oughta Learn: Enriching Your Life by Viewing It Through The Eyes of a Child

SECRET #1

BE AMAZED

Stop, Look, and Listen

When did we stop noticing the tiny miracles that surround us daily? How much more beautiful would life be if we could see these miracles again?

—JOCELYN KELLEY,

journalist

I ONCE HEARD someone say that we need magicians because we forget about the magic of the world. Children never forget this. For them, amazing things are everywhere.

It is with a sense of wonder that newborns learn about themselves and their world. And it is with this same sense of wonder that adults can revitalize their world, their jobs, their relationships, and their lives.

A TALE ABOUT A DOG’S TAIL

In their book The Confidence Chasm, authors Joe and Gail Batten note that [t]he child is unselfconscious; he responds unashamedly to the world around him. Yet his elders, too often, are afraid to show amazement, wonder, awe; they worry for fear people may think them unsophisticated, childish.

The other day, I witnessed firsthand a child’s unashamed response to the world around him as I lunched at a restaurant that had an outdoor seating area. It was perfect because I had my dog Josh with me. I tied Josh up to a bench on the other side of a potted-hedge barrier that separated the diners from the street. Josh was content because he could see me, and I could eat my lunch in peace knowing that no one could walk off with him.

As I was eating, a mother strolled by with her young son who was about two years old. The child was delighted to be able to pet the dog. Josh, being a very friendly golden retriever, loved the attention. And I, along with the child’s mother, delighted in the scene. There were several wonderful moments. One of them was when Josh lay down on the sidewalk and the child crouched down as low as he could in order to look the dog straight in the eye. But the most magical of moments was watching the child’s fascination with Josh’s elusive plume-like tail.

The young boy would try to grab his wagging tail. Of course, that was impossible, but it didn’t matter; it made it more fun for the youngster. Moreover, the movement of the tail created a breeze that delighted the child as much as his attempts to catch it. At one point, in fact, the little boy put his face as close as he could to the tail to get both the breeze and the tickling sensation. After about five minutes, something else caught the boy’s attention and he moved on. But the experience of seeing a child’s sense of wonder as he found magic in such a simple thing as a dog’s tail left me in awe.

Author Robert Fulghum tells of a similar situation with his granddaughter when they went to the zoo together. Of all the animals there, Sarah was most fascinated with the pigeons that hung out around the food stand. What she liked about them was that she could almost touch them but not quite. No matter how carefully, cautiously, and quietly she approached, the pigeons always managed to move just a small step farther out of reach.

Her aim was not so much to actually catch the birds, but rather to pursue them. The little girl found joy and wonder in what adults usually ignore. Grownups go to the zoo to view exotic animals imported from faraway lands, while they neglect the beauty of the local pigeons at their feet.

STOP AND EAT THE RAISIN

Many years ago, I participated in a weekend workshop that focused on personal growth. I’ve long since forgotten most of what happened in those few days, except for one exercise near the end of the training. The group of about thirty was taken to a hillside, and each person was given a single raisin. We were told not to eat it immediately but instead to simply look at it, to observe its color and texture, to think of its history and how it began, to realize what it took to sustain it and the process it took to transform it from a grape into a raisin. Once we felt that we had explored the raisin long enough, we were then allowed to put it in our mouths. To conclude our exploration, we examined it with our tongues, teeth, and taste buds, as we slowly chewed and swallowed it.

It was a simple process but, for me, a profound one. It opened my eyes to seeing what a special gift the raisin was, what a long and remarkable journey it took to get to me, and how in the entire world there was no other raisin that looked or tasted exactly like that one. Suddenly I discovered a world of wonder in a simple raisin.

When was the last time you looked, I mean really looked and explored, at what you were about to eat? If you do, you might begin to discover, as children do, the wonder of the little things in our great, big universe.

Kids even find wonder and joy in things that annoy adults. I once read about a man who was trying to do some quiet work at home, but he was interrupted by an incredibly loud garbage truck.

Every few houses, it stopped to grind and crush the trash. Each time, it would break the man’s concentration as he struggled to continue working. Finally, he walked to the window to see how long the annoyance might last, but what he got instead was a big lesson from a small child.

In the front yard, his five-year-old son was watching the truck with great joy. The child climbed on top of a fire hydrant to get the best possible view. From there, he could see the inside of the huge truck where giant mechanical teeth chewed up the garbage. The noise just made it even more appealing to the youngster. It was the same situation, but one that irritated the adult and delighted the child.

The lesson that adults can learn here is that the world is filled with things that can either amaze or annoy us. The trick is to open our eyes and try to see the former. Such things are everywhere. A kid can find a penny on the street and feel rich. They can find a multicolored rock and feel like Indiana Jones. They can find a few cardboard boxes and make them into a clubhouse.

Kids find enjoyment in the simplest of things. You can too.

LOOK FOR THE LITTLE THINGS

Without realizing it, one child taught Judith Stronach a lesson in stopping, looking, and enjoying the little things. She had taken a group on a nature walk and instructed each child to find one item (such as a plant, creature, or rock), draw it, and finally write a story from its point of view. Their comments, says Stronach, contained profound teachings.

Most inspiring for me was the experience of Forrest, a seven-year-old. When he showed me his drawing of a carefully observed flower, I praised it and asked if he could look again and find one more thing to draw. He looked and found a brown petal. I said, Wonderful! But I think you might discover something else. Can you look again? Then he saw a bug on the stem and became very excited at all he might have overlooked on this unusual treasure hunt.

Stronach continued:

For twenty minutes, Forrest drew with minimal encouragement to look again each time he thought he had finished…. His innocent intensity and pleasure became my guides to observe his body, eyes, fingers, and the atmosphere around his excitement. In this process of observation, I recovered my own mindfulness. I too opened to the morning and discovered the vivid reality that is always available when we look beyond our routine expectations. I gave him a technique and a safe environment to explore, and he taught me all about looking.

Jordan Lejuwaan also expresses the power and importance of looking in his article 5 Lessons We Can Learn from Children on his website highexistence.com. During the last few days, he says, I’ve been attempting to re-live the wonder of childhood by viewing the world from a different perspective. I’ve found that if you really put forth the effort to find the beauty in small things (nature, architecture, art, the wonder of technology), it can be done! Take a second and look at something, really look at it! A basic example would the bark of a tree. If you can see the intricacy and beauty of the spirals of wood, you can apply that same perspective to bigger and even more fantastic things.

Writer and nature lover Rachel Carson had a lifelong reverence for the wonder of nature and how it can rekindle the feeling we felt when we discovered the natural world for the first time. One of her stories is about her young nephew Roger and the Christmas tree game they would play in the forest. She would point to a young spruce seedling and remark that it must be a Christmas tree for squirrels. At an even smaller seedling, she’d tell her nephew that it must be for little bugs of some kind; at a slightly bigger one, she’d say that it was for rabbits or woodchucks. Once the game was started, it was played on all woods walks, with warnings to each other not to step on the Christmas trees.

And finally, another stop-and-look story comes from Rea Wilcox-Ball. She says, Every time my son sees the moon, he gets so excited and starts saying, ‘Moon, Momma, da moon.’ When the moon slips behind clouds, he asks, ‘Moon, where did you go?’ and then he exclaims with joy, ‘Da MOON!’ when he sees it again. This is why I love our nighttime family walks. He even says, ‘Ni ni moon,’ when our walk is over and we’re heading into the house.

How often do you look up at night and talk to the moon?

LOOK FOR THE MAGIC

Appreciating the sense of wonder in the world is a gift that children can give us if we are willing to embrace it. But first we need to stop and look at our world, really look. That is what children do all the time; they look and see a world that adults have long forgotten exists. In our fast-paced, have-to-get-it-done-now environment, adults don’t often take the time to see and treasure the extraordinary world we live in.

Barbara Gates, cofounder and editor of the journal Inquiring Mind, provides us with a great example of the sense of wonder and playfulness that children have about daily occurrences. In the journal, she describes the reaction her three-year-old daughter Caitlin has after using the potty. She leaps up after a poop and leans down over the bowl. With a yelp, she calls me. ‘Mama, I made a mountain,’ or ‘Mama, it’s a pond with little boats sailing in it. The other day she insisted that my husband, Patrick, join her in the bathroom. But Daddy, come see. It’s a Mommy and three little Caitlins. And, indeed it was…. Yesterday Caitlin’s creative pooping transcended the ordinary mountains and boats. Mama, Daddy, she cried, I made a snake with feathers. It’s a snake-bird!

Gates goes on to talk about the important lesson she is learning from her daughter: Caitlin is not simply teaching me to observe…. This presence that she teaches me at the potty is more fundamental—to be with whatever comes, even if some might perceive it as ugly. She is neither disgusted by her poop, nor afraid of it. In fact, she is curious, non-judging and imaginative. What a way to greet life!

THE WONDER OF WEEDS

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, said the Buddha, our whole life would change. Flowers are indeed miracles; they are all different. Their shapes and varied color combinations are amazing. I was looking at a single fuchsia the other day. Its vivid purple and deep crimson colors along with its teardrop form reminded me of some exotic miniature kimono, one that might be a costume in an elaborate Lilliputian staging of Madame Butterfly.

Many flowers like the rose give off an aroma that gets embedded within our brains and brings back memories for a lifetime. Every Mother’s Day, for example, we had lilacs in our house. Now every time I pass a florist during the month of May and get a whiff of lilacs, I’m immediately transported back to my childhood.

Weeds are incredible flowers too. Unfortunately, many adults don’t see them that way. One parent asked his kids to pull all the dandelions in the front yard because he didn’t like them ruining his otherwise pristine lawn. But the kids refused. Dandelions are so pretty, they responded. Why can’t we like them? The kids knew what Ella Wheeler Wilcox was speaking about when she wrote: A weed is but an unloved flower. The parent could see the dandelions only as weeds to be gotten rid of. The kids saw them as something to admire.

In her blog Grace, Grits and Gardening, Talya Tate Boerner talks about how she and her sister would leave patches of dandelions in the side yard in spite of their father’s preference for mowing them down. They left them because they liked them, and she says, If you look closely, dandelions are not that different from mums. Or asters. Or daisies. Only easier to grow. Moreover, They will even predict the weather—open and fluffy during a stretch of sunny days but shut tight when rain is coming. With leaves that can be used for tea and salad and wine, the dandelion is useful too.

But the very best part, says Boerner, is that following the bright yellow bloom, the flower head transforms into a light white feathery globe, a parachute ready to spread tiny seeds across the land. What other flower miraculously transforms a roadside or abandoned lot or ditch bank into a thousand wishes?

Perhaps the next time you see a field of dandelions, you will be able to see it in a new way, in the way a child might.

BE WOWED

In his book Lessons from the Sandbox, author Alan Gregerman says, When we were small kids, we had keen senses of wonder and natural inclinations to see magic and possibilities in everything. Most days we walked around with a permanent wow! on our faces, ready and willing to be amazed by virtually anything that came our way.

When my mother was nearly eighty years old, she had a big wow! experience when she took her first plane ride. For years, I had encouraged her to fly on a jet, but nothing I did or said would get her off the ground. Then one day, she won a round-trip airline ticket and finally got on a plane.

I met her at the airport as she deplaned and anxiously asked her if she enjoyed the flight. With a child’s delight, she proclaimed, Oh, it was wonderful. I got to see the tops of the clouds!

Next time you are on a long uncomfortable flight, instead of complaining, revel in the delight of seeing the tops of the clouds. Before the last century, no one ever saw the tops of clouds, had breakfast in New York and dinner in Los Angeles on the same day, or watched a movie thirty thousand feet above the earth.

LISTEN UP

Listening is such a simple act, says management consultant Margaret J. Wheatley. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don’t have to do anything else. We don’t have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen.

Often adults miss things because they neglect to listen. Kids can teach us not only to stop and look, but to listen as well. Kirsten Siggins, coauthor of The Power of Curiosity and cofounder of the Institute of Curiosity, shared a story with me about how her lack of listening caused a major conflict between her and her three-year-old son:

It was early one morning. I was trying to get my son