We don’t come into the world with much. The blank slate of our life has but one word scrawled across it – Innocent. With all that the gift of life has to offer, we’re always left wondering if it’s worth the one trade we can never take back.
INNOCENCE
We can see it in their eyes. Innocence. More than frailty or cuteness, their smell or the softness of their skin; innocence is what makes a newborn baby so special. They are special because innocence is so rare. Soon enough, human mischief begins to tarnish that innocent glow and the baby inside of us all becomes suspect. Welcome to the game of life.
After those first few months, the rest of the world begins to see just another one of us. Though the patina that comes from living – from trying, crying and dying, is unmistakable, each of us knows that our own innocence remains somewhere inside, largely intact. We are all familiar with our vulnerability, and our innate capacity to stumble and fail. We know that much of our success comes from the luck in a coin toss and all are at least religious enough to pray for blessings – because we are mostly, defenseless.
Our baby eyes eventually open to a world filled with rage. Violence, disparity and injustice force us to forget innocence. Carnage in the form of poverty, gang activities, police killings, corporate pressure and a system that’s turned its soft underbelly to the influence of power and greed, make us forget that we once aspired to be more than our animal selves. Naturally, we fight and resist. We raise drawbridges and circle wagons, because we know that survival comes before the blessings. But we also forget that which we once knew. We forget that we are innocent.
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Thankfully so. We’d have done ourselves in long ago if all our thoughts had come to fruition. Thank you for your comment and for taking the time to visit the site.
Change starts from within, my friend. We can’t point fingers at the cruel world, while also going out of our way to be unkind to others. Maybe it is time to consider how your personal actions and words effect others.
Dear Concerned – Thank you for the comment. This short essay tries to address the topic of innocence in the abstract, without any reference to the author or any other individual. We all have a much more limited view of the total context of the world we live in than we can imagine and the cause and effect of it all is much larger than we think. In our short time here, with our limited perspective , I think we all carry more guilt than we have a right to claim title to. That is not making an excuse for avoiding responsibility – only suggesting that we are not able to see the beginnings and ends of it all.