by David D. Horowitz
My Webster’s Dictionary defines “childish” as “belonging to a child or childhood” and relates the synonyms “foolish” and “petty.” It connotes repellent immaturity. The dictionary defines “childlike” as “resembling a child” but, by contrast, lists as synonyms “meek,” “dutiful,” and “submissive.” “Childlike” generally connotes naïveté, wonderment, or spontaneous delight.
These two words’ divergence reflects adult ambivalence about the effects of experience. While experience might deepen and sensitize, it might also embitter and harden. When from mistrust we deem someone evil, and then discover we judged too harshly, we might long to be more trusting and accepting, like a child. Likewise, when the complex routines and responsibilities of adulthood so burden us we can no longer smile or celebrate, we might long for youth, when we played softball until nightfall, trailblazed meadows, and endlessly joked, giggled, and fantasized. Surely, adulthood’s realities can occasion nostalgia for childhood’s recreations.
Negative adult experience can also occasion religious recommitment, as someone who feels soiled by drug addiction or hatred and violence might seek renewal in baptism and reverence of the baby Jesus. Identifying with the innocence of infancy helps some recommit to changing elements of their character, to “starting over.”
Adulthood ideally entails accruing wisdom from experience without succumbing to cynical mistrust and joyless routinization. How do we cultivate empathy and maximize prudence while preserving our capacity to joyfully appreciate a starry night, a scarlet rose, a sincere compliment? I find my writing poetry helps greatly. Frequently, my writing takes me in surprising directions, scraping away stereotypes as I push towards representation of true complexity. Also, listening to a favorite symphony or set of songs at day’s end can cheer and console, rejuvenate and refresh me so I can smile tomorrow.
Tomorrow for me typically means work. I work in a downtown Seattle skyscraper, where birds sometimes nest in high-level nooks. Recently, I and fellow employees watched two seagulls court, mate, nest, and raise young just outside one of our firm’s windows. Of particular note was the daily drama of the parents’ watching for and fending off a peregrine falcon’s potential attacks on their three nest-bound chicks. Several times the parents squawked at and attacked the falcon; once just after such an incident they were joined by eight other gulls who gathered on a ledge near the nest, hidden in a dark corner, and jeered defiant challenge. How dangerous is youth, and how much help it needs to survive unanticipated predators! Experience teaches most everyone this lesson. Yet, to soar with the spontaneous grace and apparent joy of a gull over the blue bay and in and around downtown’s fifty-story peaks, to swoon and spiral and glide and flap… I made sure I watched the gulls at least once a day. Doing so helped remind me of the value of experience and safety—and of spontaneous joy and delight.