All losses are losses of innocence. Think back on all your losses. Or on your first one. Often, when I ask someone to recall their oldest memory, it is a painful one. It is about an injustice, or an injury, or a cruel realization; it is some kind of loss.
The process of becoming an adult (whatever that might mean to you) is a painful one. Adulthood is a painful state to find yourself in if you are not ready. And staying a child is also painful. Pain, pain, at every turn. I believe this pain is the knowing we are giving something up that we would rather keep to get something that is scary. Something that, once gone, can not be replaced. Some forms of innocence cannot serve us as adults. We would be left too vulnerable in a world full of adults. But others of our innocent traits keep us from becoming too hardened. It's a delicate balance.
The process of becoming an adult (whatever that might mean to you) is a painful one. Adulthood is a painful state to find yourself in if you are not ready. And staying a child is also painful. Pain, pain, at every turn. I believe this pain is the knowing we are giving something up that we would rather keep to get something that is scary. Something that, once gone, can not be replaced. Some forms of innocence cannot serve us as adults. We would be left too vulnerable in a world full of adults. But others of our innocent traits keep us from becoming too hardened. It's a delicate balance.
| Innocence is essential to our psychological health throughout the life span. From infancy onward, innocence provides the foundation for our natural openness to the world, to other beings, to cooperative relationships, to new life experiences, to deep learning and creativity. Innocence is akin to what Buddhists call "beginner's mind"; it allows us to see with fresh eyes, respond with a young heart, act without guile or deception, love like we've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching, and celebrate the joy of existence. Innocence is the newness...that, regardless of our age or stage, can blossom all through out lives. Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul |
Let's end with Dickinson, that great existential philosopher who chose to share very little of her wisdom with a violent world while she was alive. Below is one of the 1800 poems she wrote about love, control, self-awareness, and innocence lost. I think she is advising us to continually redirect our attention inward so that we may reacquaint ourselves with our only true home: that shining source of all power we call the Self.
959
Emily Dickinson
A loss of something ever felt I--
The first that I could recollect
Bereft I was—of what I knew not
Too young that any should suspect
A Mourner walked among the children
I notwithstanding went about
As one bemoaning a Dominion
Itself the only Prince cast out--
Elder, Today, a session wiser
And fainter, too, as Wiseness is--
I find myself still softly searching
For my Delinquent Palaces--
And a Suspicion, like a Finger
Touches my Forehead now and then
That I am looking oppositely
For the site of the Kingdom of Heaven--
Emily Dickinson
A loss of something ever felt I--
The first that I could recollect
Bereft I was—of what I knew not
Too young that any should suspect
A Mourner walked among the children
I notwithstanding went about
As one bemoaning a Dominion
Itself the only Prince cast out--
Elder, Today, a session wiser
And fainter, too, as Wiseness is--
I find myself still softly searching
For my Delinquent Palaces--
And a Suspicion, like a Finger
Touches my Forehead now and then
That I am looking oppositely
For the site of the Kingdom of Heaven--
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