Living again

I was looking through an old family photo album when I came across a picture of a boy of about eight years old sitting on the shoulders of his big brother, and there is a lot of laughter in their eyes.

That picture evoked many great memories. We were lucky to grow up in the village without TVs to preoccupy us. So we spent our free time in the grazing fields getting involved in all sorts of mischief.

This bonded us and made us live without inhibitions; true to ourselves. We climbed trees like monkeys and innocently played hide-and-seek with little girls.

It seemed like we had a clue of what it means to live to the full without a worry in the world. Life was sweet because it was lived in pure simplicity. We made mistakes and were spanked but the pains did not stay in our little hearts because the joys therein, so it seemed, would never be erased by the pricks of life that are part of being human.

Never forget the child in you

We had so many dreams of greatness and we were swept along on a current of their beauty that we had no time to bother our minds about how they could be fulfilled. We did not know that there were difficult life questions whose answers we had to have hard times searching for.

Thinking about it now, I see the complexity of life begins the moment we lose the simplicity that defines the early years of growth. The greatest teacher of all time, Jesus Christ, advised adults to be like little children because children don’t spend their nights gnashing their teeth over the mistakes made in the day, nor worrying about tomorrow. Children are quick to forgive and forget, and take on life like they would never stop. They have absolutely no fear and believe they will succeed at anything they attempt.

Let us find the child in us and we shall live again.