Awareness - neither young nor old...

Marcus - 2006



People tend to have short memories – it surprises me – but it's true! Most people will remember significant events from years gone by, and many will even remember names, faces and places. That's all well and good, and to be honest much of that stuff isn’t so hard to remember…the brain is a giant log book, so it's only natural we remember figures and details. But those aren't the things I am talking about.


We live a self-imposed repetitive cycle, one day much like the next...little changes year to year. The same holidays come and go, the same old celebrations – "in with the new, out with the old". The new is just the old come again though.

However, for all this – things do change from decade to decade. Today's world bears little resemblance to the world of the 1960's other than in superficial tones. A different society, different beliefs...different attitudes. When people think about it – they remember all that too

But in the end the one thing people remember least about, is themselves.

Not what they wore, or where they were – that's easy, and just as easily logged as any other fact. But what or who they were inside? How they thought, how they perceived? Do they remember the way in which their senses reacted, the speed at which their mind grasped something? How about going far back to childhood. What did you think about? How did you believe things worked?

How did you feel about the world?

Do you remember the manner in which you perceived time? How about people? Relationships with parents or other family? Not the details...that's easy to remember. I am asking you to remember how your mind worked.


Do we know how a child thinks?

It's amazing how few people actually do know how to speak to a child. The poor kids all too often get treated like little adults (or worse, some form of lackwit; "AND...HOW...ARE...YOU...TO--DAY?"). How did you feel the first time you were asked "What do you think about Aunt Jessie's new car?" or “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I remember. I was stumped. "What the hell?" I would think (though in more childlike terms). And I would stand there trying to comprehend what it meant to "grow up". What a total dense adult like statement! In those young years my mind was always in the moment, not in the past or "just now"; nor in the future or "later". What did I want to be when I grew up? How the hell would I know, I was perpetually living in the moment, and I had no notion as to what others thought about me. My needs were met (those needs which I understood I had at that point – what 5 year old fully understands their own needs?).


Why would I give any thought to being old, and having a career?

I wouldn't. But that's how it begins. The constant barrage of naive questions from the adult mind – eventually I learnt how to respond to these questions. Slowly my curious and enquiring mind realized it didn’t need to be curious and enquiring. All it needed to do was speak rote. An adult would ask one of a dozen set questions, "Are you looking forward to going to school?", "Are you any good at football?", "What music do you like?"

It didn't really matter what I thought – (well I didn't really think; kids don't think in our adult-like tired and linear manner), so quite naturally I learnt to switch my brain off and memorize some details and facts. Yay! I discovered my inbuilt logbook!

Joy.

But nevertheless, I still would look at adults and wonder what they were about. Even worse were the other kids around me that became increasingly adult-like the older we got. In many ways it became about pleasing others. Say the right thing and they were happy. Say the wrong thing and they weren’t.

As I got older I discovered this also related to facial expressions and body language. Forget to pull the edges of my lips up at someone’s egotistical jape and they weren’t happy. Make a smile and they were.


So that became a matter of rote too. Remembering the right physical responses, that was a little tougher to master, because some adults seemed to notice more than others. Once or twice someone would come along and comment on the fact that; "You don't miss anything do you."

That too confused me. It didn't really fit into the pattern all the other adults had created. I wasn’t supposed to notice things...

...was I...?

Slowly things changed. I began to understand the adult vision of "time". I would begin to think about yesterday and tomorrow. And eventually I began to think of things I wanted to get – rather than the things I wanted there and then. So my focus of time moved along with my place in it. I wasn't any longer in the here and now; I was always a few seconds ahead of now, or a few seconds behind it. Slowly those few seconds became days and weeks. Soon enough I was everywhen else but now.

But that was okay, because that was what I had been taught. That's how the world worked, and the quicker I could grasp onto that fact the easier things would go for me. Adults get very confused when children don't respond correctly. It challenges their perspective. And that's bad.

By now I was in a fixed routine. I knew I had to be places at certain times. I knew I had to learn and remember things. I even understood how to react correctly to adults and their situations.


But it never really made much sense. It was all too thoughtless...too... unconsidered. I had been led to believe that adults made me learn all these things for a purpose. Imagine my surprise when I learnt there wasn't a purpose! It was all just one large routine – we were to be unthinking cogs in a great machine – all running on autopilot.

That was a bit tough to accept. But I soon found out that if I didn't make any waves I could go along with their routine adult world – and on the surface of it, I would fit right in.

The only thing was, I didn't fit in. I saw adults making the stupidest of mistakes, I saw them acting without thought. I saw them follow the same pattern year in year out, and that was okay. It is the way the world is, people needed to get things done. But the strangest thing was – they didn't seem to remember they had done it all before. Every time they set themselves to a task they had done a hundred times before, they acted as if it was the first time. The same emotions, the same body language the same words.

I could understand why people had to go to work everyday, and sit in the same traffic jams. I could understand why I had to go to school everyday, and that the lesson timetables repeated every week. I understood why there was a routine.

What I didn't understand is why people created the routine in their mind as well. Why did they seem to think the same thoughts over again and again, every time a lesson started? Why did people say the same old thing – and worse why did others respond each time in the same manner?

I couldn't figure it out. Obviously I just didn't "get it", I must have misunderstood some very important lessons all the adults tried to teach me when I was younger. And now it was too late – no matter how I tried I couldn’t fit in.

That went on for many years, until finally I had the realization that all those poor people were broken. It wasn't that I didn’t understand them. I understood all too well.


They didn't understand themselves, and they didn't remember.

They forgot what it is like to be a kid, they had no idea how the mind of a child worked. It had been bashed out of them; driven away as they sought to conform and to please.


Well then it starts from the other angle. I'm the adult, and young'uns are born. It’s all nice for the first year or so – but once they reach eighteen months, things change. The parents don’t really know how to handle them. The kid throws a tantrum, so the adult lays on the guilt trip, or they think they are training a puppy so try the reward based tactics. Well that's not too bad for the next six months or so...up until the kid learns those very special words...

...me, I and mine...

Then what? Well the kid has said "I" so he obviously realizes he is an individual. So then it must naturally follow that we treat them in the only way we know how. As we have always been treated ourselves. After all, we learnt some neat little lessons as we grew up – and maybe we learnt some even better ones in early adulthood. We know what the world is about, and we know how to deal with people. And kids are just people really – only a little smaller…

...aren't they?

But there is a conflict – an incompatibility. We know about it, we experienced it ourselves, but we don't remember – we forgot. The kid is in the moment, and we aren't. The kid sees the world vastly different than we do; theirs is simple and clean. Ours is full of rules and fears, problems and money. Oh and not forgetting the biggie – doing something wrong!

So the kid lives according to her little view of the world. Her world is pretty small in scope, but it’s really neat. And of course there is Mummy and Daddy, or any one else that has taken care of her. She is in the moment, and hasn't really understood about being an individual all that long. Mostly when she tries something out, she needs to look at her parents to find out what’s going on. So she gets hold of the scissors and begins to cut up the carpet...all the while just looking at you waiting to see what you do. That's how it works, the kid is there in the moment – they don’t know a lot – but they do know about cause and effect.

They are the cause...and you are the effect...

But we don't really understand cause and effect as well as them, so we just react. We jump up and down, maybe shout a little. Run across the room to snatch back those scissors, a look of wild terror in our eyes. And then we rant some more, and maybe withhold the sweets or send her to bed. All well and good, the kid now knows not to touch the scissors.

There she was, trying out the scissors wondering what they were all about. Let's look at Daddy she thinks – I am sure Daddy knows what these things are about. I'm not really sure what I am doing – but Daddy will know. Then suddenly up he jumps, the walls shake with his voice, his eye wide and almost sprouting out his head. Three great big massive strides and he is on top of you, the scissors are gone quicker than you can blink. Maybe you're yanked off the ground at a pretty rapid rate, that voice still blaring.

...so the scissors are bad then...

Or...well...maybe she thinks it was her that is bad? Maybe the scissors are scary now...or perhaps she needs to get out of the moment a bit and become aware of past and present. Pretty useless being in the now anyway...and fear and worrying are a great solution to that. So all is good.


Well hopefully the kid learnt her lesson. But maybe and maybe not. Cause and effect is a funny thing, especially when we are the cause and the kid is the effect. The kid’s parents are the kid's entire world – I remember that, do you? Most other adults are pretty – well – big too. What the adults say and do defines the kid. The kid was no doubt born with some really great personality traits (and maybe a few that aren't so great), but they learn from us. We are the guiding fire. But that doesn't mean they listen to us, far from it. What it does mean is that incompatibilities cause problems.

How would another – more wiser kid have handled that situation in place of the parent? What would you have done if you were totally in the moment?

Maybe a kid can teach us as much as we can teach them. Maybe they can help us remember. And when that happens it's pretty miraculous, because a whole new world opens up. You learn to see the world in two ways. In fact you realize it is far more than that – you realize there actually are two worlds! The adult world of past and future...of constant Mind activity, and the quite, silent world of Now where anything is possible.

Now Stop!

The mind goes pretty fast doesn't it? When you stop, it's almost like someone has finally shut-off that blumin' great noise generator. That's the key right there; the key that opens the door into the now. The door which will help us remember. When we finally go through that door, and open our eyes and look...we realize we hadn't actually forgotten at all. It was there all along; just buried under all that useless hectic, pointless junk, which had been ingrained in us since forever.

We knew it when we were kids...we could see it in all the adults around us. Our kids see it in us everyday. Take a step back, and learn by their example. And once you discover their world again – who knows what else is possible!


Marcus – 2006

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