If only I could view the world like a child.

Something I love about teaching Kindergarten is being constantly surrounded by the innocent and full hearted wonderment of small children.  These children especially have a unique perspective as they are just beginning their school experience and all of them are beside themselves with excitement.  If we could all live our lives the way these children do, there is no doubt in my mind that the world would be a better place.

One of the things I love is the way 5 year olds live in the moment.  They have full emotions that are honest and raw and they are not afraid to express them.  They aren't afraid of saying how they feel, which might cause problems if they also were not incredibly gracious with their forgiveness... but they are.  Sometimes their world is falling apart because their friend said something mean or hurt them physically and a second later, they are ready to put it behind them and be as friendly as ever.  Yet, as an adult I am sometimes--actually often--stingy with forgiveness and understanding.  Typically it takes me some time to come to my senses and realize anger and resentment are never good.  How much time and hardship I would save myself if I lived in the moment and offered forgiveness freely like the children in my class.  And the most amazing thing is these children often give forgiveness blindly without necessarily understanding why someone hurt them.  They inspire me.

Another trait of these small people that I admire is the way they are unafraid to share their ideas and questions.  This uninhibited attitude towards the way they process their world is amazing to me.  It is one of the main reasons I chose to teach small children.  Their eagerness to do this is why I think they are far greater thinkers than most adults.  They think out of the box...they come up with ideas that are not even close to the thoughts an adult would imagine they would say.  However, it is often far more insightful and it  forces us to look at things from different ways.  Somewhere a long the way, this gets lost and we begin to share only ideas we think are expected.  Ultimately, after enough times doing this, I think we actually start limiting our thinking inside our heads as well.  If we allowed children to continue to think for themselves instead of teaching them how to think like we want them to--otherwise known as education (sadly)--I imagine people would view the world differently by the time they were grown.

What happens to change the way we think and feel as a child to how we think and feel as adults and why can't we learn from them?