Let kids teach us happiness

The Boston Herald

Kids do it all the time. Maybe that's why they're happy. Rain or shine, summer or winter, they wake up every day, eager for the day because the world is their playground. The littlest kids are the happiest. A book entertains them - or a pot, or a sliver of sunlight shimmering on the floor.

I watch Adam, who is 4 months, smile at his mother and follow her with his eyes. She sings to him and he opens his mouth and tries to sing back. I watch Lucy, who is 1, play with a ball. She holds it in her left hand. She transfers it to her right. She looks at it straight on. She bends her head to look at it from underneath. A ball is that fascinating to her.

I carry her into the bathroom. She studies the wallpaper. It's pink and flowery. She reaches for a towel. She grabs at the running water. Nothing goes unnoticed.

Amanda is 2. She's at a party. There are bigger kids in the pool and bigger kids in the moon walk. She walks around looking at them, smiling at some, pausing at others, lifting her face to the sun, all the while holding her mother's hand. Frankie is 9. He's at the same party. He plays in the moon walk. He swims in the pool. He eats hamburgers and runs on the grass. And when it's time for karaoke, he does his Elvis Presley impression.

Where does all this intrinsic joy go? What kills curiosity and contentment and enthusiasm, and a human being's great love of life? What happens to our spirits that as adults we seldom see the good and the beauty that we saw as kids?

Children are naive. That's the simple answer. Children are innocent and don't know about all the dangers in the world. They don't know about loss and death and disappointment and hunger for things they will never have. They don't know that a tree limb can fall and kill you. Or that you can be shot while playing. Or stabbed. Or run down by a speeding driver. They don't know that houses can blow up and that children can die, and parents, too. Or that there are bombs and poisons and disease and disaster lurking around every corner. They don't know that life is temporary and that it can end at any moment. All they know is the people they know and the moment they are living now.

The nuns used to say, when I was a girl and bewitched by the world, not to fall in love with the temporal, with the seasons, or a place or a trellis rimmed in red roses because they were but pale reflections of God's kingdom. I never understood this. How can we not love what is a gift? How can we not be dazzled by creation? None of us earned anything we have. What did we do to deserve our lives, to warrant a single breeze, a single flower, the summer sun, an August moon, limbs, eyes, a full belly, someone smiling at us?

All children love what they have, even when what they have isn't much. But adults? We can have a roof over our heads, a car that starts, money in our pocket, someone who's glad to see us at the end of a day - and it's still not enough. Does discontent and wanting more and expecting less come from within or without? Do we learn it or are we born with the seeds of it? I watch the 1-year-old study her hands. She wriggles her fingers. She clenches her fists. She claps. She smiles. And then she laughs. Her hands amaze her. And because I am watching and seeing through her eyes, because I am in her world and on her playground, her hands, her fingers, her clap, her smile and her laugh amaze me, too.