“Mommy, mommy look god painted the sky today,” the little child with wide eyes and a big smile said, glowing face turned upwards. As the mother began to explain the physics behind a rainbow, she stopped.
The naive child was gifted with the lens of ignorance through which he looked upon reality. A lens that distorts the world into a more exciting and beautiful place. Would it be right to shatter the glass before it’s time or let it gather dust till the child is forced to remove it, both equally cruel.
Shattering it in one blow, a shard might pierce the child’s eye, scarring his vision for life. He will never see the world without a crack, good without a fault.
As it gathers dust, the child only assumes that the fault is in the lens, not the world. Once the lens is off, the dust falls on his eyes instead, and he realized that the world is where the dust came from in the first place.
There is a third option. The lens never comes off. Quite like an actual lens, you sometimes forget that you’re wearing it. With increase in age, memory deteriorates and we forget what rainbows and unicorns are. Jumping on a trampoline now becomes a health hazard, staying up late, a bad habit.
As we grow up, the security of the lens fades and as the mind scares the heart, the desire to take chances diminishes, cons always outweighing the pros.
Are we so scared to jump off that cliff into the abyss of ignorance where we once rejoiced? Jump and as the wind reminds you how to fly, your eyes will open and the lens will dominate, giving you a glimpse of what the world looks like through a child’s eye. Hold on to that glimpse, it’s your parachute to keep you ignorant enough, not too much nor too less.
[Written by Niyoshi Parekh]
