Birthright

Being a child is not easy. I read somewhere that children are "the human dustbins of recycled knowledge". Shocked as I was when pondering on those words, I thought, if this be true, children would, as they undergo the process of digesting recycled leftovers, begin the process of losing their innocence.

Sometimes innocence is lost by exposure to peer's "wisdom". Who wasn't told of "adult secrets" blurred by misconceptions which later led to adult trauma? Who did not meet insensitive and abusive adults, dreadful offsprings of early mistreatment?

Nevertheless, the mechanism of society seems to be built on the premise of making everyone lose innocence. As our caregivers "innocently" lead us to deal with the environment, they imbue us with their failures, their resentment and their anger.

But where does that anger come from? Evidently from their own loss of innocence. Does it sound familiar to you, my dear reader? All the "do's" and "dont's", all the "-isms" carefully nurtured and taught through all of our lives, are always lurking inside to take over at any given moment. Those obscure precepts leave us as beggarly ghosts, waiting to live other people's lives.

So, not feeling comfortable with that definition, and always longing for answers, I now resort to education. The Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana said: "Only Education defeats poverty". Education surely lead us to leave that "beggarly state", make us retrace our footsteps, unlearn cynicism, just to rightfully regain innocence, to rightfully become children again.

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Everlasting, Impregnable, Omnipresent Spirit,

Bless them Teachers all,

Loving Lifegivers, poverty Defeaters!