Don’t forget to be a child

As a child I had to grow up fast. Partly, because adults involved me in adult-stuff. Partly, because as a child I already felt responsible for everything happening around me. I did play as a kid, been naughty and although my teachers always told my parents I was a model-student with regard to social behavior…well, I wasn’t always a holy bean and I’ve got my nickname Mimosa Pudica for a reason.

Although now I know, I don’t have to take up all the issues in our big Dreampack, that doesn’t mean to me, I should stop trying to be kind to, and care for, our globe and the living creatures upon it. Thanks to a fantastic informative post by Jueseppi about the month November, I discovered today is World Kindness Day. If you have been visiting my website regularly, you know I am all for being kind towards each other.

I found more information about this day at the website of the World Kindness Movement:

“WKM is an international movement with no political or religious affiliations.
The formation of the organisation crystallised at a conference in Tokyo on 13th November 1997
when Japan brought together like-minded kindness organisations from around the world
for the first time. WKM is now recognised as the peak global body for Kindness
and whilst not a governing body it is a platform for collaboration and sharing.
The mission of the WKM is to inspire individuals towards
greater kindness by connecting nations to create a kinder world. “

Definitely going to explore this movement myself and I hope you do too 😉

Back to being a child and the connection with being kind.
In Dutch (The Netherlands) kind means child. The translation for kind in Dutch, related to kindness, is vriendelijk, which equals friendly in English. Should I translate vriendelijk kind literally, it would be kind child.

There are exceptions, but I believe children come into our world kind by nature. Of course, warning a child not to trust just any stranger is wise and there comes a time, we all do have to get mature and take responsibility for or own actions and thus think twice before we act.
However, too often adults ruin that natural quality of being kind. Most of us are told to “stop being a child, grow up!” or “don’t be such a smart-ass, what do you know?”. Not trusting strangers as a child, yes, but as an adult we can be, at least, friendly, right?

My dear friend Manuel posted this thought recently at Patreon:

Kids……. WE ARE!!!
Grown up children we
All are, pretending we know
What we are doing
M.O.

I always try to respond instinctively at Manuel’s thoughts and poetry, since his art is pure, pure emotion and therefore I want to respond pure: “Ha, I think children are often smarter as we, adults, are. We forgot how to be like children; open-minded, spontaneous, no fear…”

Yes, many of us pretend to know what we are doing. Maybe, a way to figure out what we should be doing, is to be kind to each other, to our neighbors. And maybe, remembering how we were as children: open-minded, spontaneous, fearless…could be the way to be kind towards one and another.

So, let us be a kind child again, starting today at World Kindness Day.