Not A Kid any More

Having walked for a couple of hours from one office to the next, I found myself exhausted but I had to stride before the office would shut for the lunch break.

To shorten the way, I turned into the park where I saw this little girl with big blonde curls dressed in her little blue jeans and pinky girly shoes. Down her cheeks, like crystals, streamed huge tears and she screamed, looking at her grandma, “I cannot walk any more! My legs hurt!!! I cannot walk! I need help! Please, carry me!!!”

Sometimes little kids get grumpy and cranky and grown-ups get puzzled or distressed because their reality and perspective of things do not coincide with the reality of a child.
Little children let the grown-ups deal with their reality.

I admit that little bodies have their strings to pull, but I also think that we grown-ups, very often with good intentions to train well our child, forget that we learnt how to maneuver and go around in our world that we built out of pretence and performance. We do not tolerate divergence but demand conformity, we are heartless to the weak and we often laugh at the one who honestly reveals her weakness or limitations, and we have little compassion to offer, less encouragement and inspiration, if at all. But a spanking or reproach.

It is not appropriate to let the kid any time at any place spill her attitudes, but there should be space to let her be, to let her feel and help her to be safe when she finds her limitation, not by reproach but by a stretched hand that will mean, “I will be with you. I will help you.”

I am not a kid any more. I could not stamp my feet and squeeze my feasts in the middle of the road, though I wished I could join the blonde curly babe, at least for a minute. I wish I could scream that I was tired of making this stupid campaigns initiated by the failing fat bureaucracy.
My reality was that I still had to walk another couple of blocks. And I had to deal with my grown-up reality. I happily looked at the girl who found compassion in her grandma who took her to the bench, and I moved on remembering that I had the reason to meddle in the paper procedures and bureaucratic offices. I smiled – it was a good reason!