This I Believe

I wonder what it would be like to suddenly become as I was in the very first stages of our lives. As tiny little babies, I was pure, innocent, and fresh. How did I feel? What did I think?

As I walked down the street today, I saw a woman with four young children. One of them was singing her own tune as loud as she could, with a look of pure happiness across our face.

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to spend a day at a school for the severely handicapped. I worked with a girl who was not verbal, but sang constantly in her own language of random syllables and melodies. She was like a little child, singing and caressing her favorite Elmo doll, feeling the soft texture of its fur with her mouth. As I worked closely with her, helping her, touching her, talking to her, she looked up at me and said, “Happy.”

I believe in the power of innocence in order to keep me from selfishness and self destruction. I believe in leading a pure life. Not necessarily a naïve or sheltered one, but one that lets the real me shine through. The one we started as when we first came into this life: joyful, loving, trusting, giving. Someone who does the right thing because it is merely a habit of their being. I strive to be the person I was before I became seduced by want, before I became enthralled with feeling and self-centered. I want joy in my life, the kind of joy I feel when I’m helping a friend in need, when I contemplate the glorious mysteries of life, and when I feel like I really am me and I truly know someone else. I started as a little child, and I still have a part of that past within us. Could it be that almost everything in this world distracts me from that fact?

I want to always be able to be aware of who I really am. I feel that I would lose myself to the back corners of my under the influence of any drug, any greed. It’s not who I really am. I want to live this way.