This morning my little daughter Nomi was busily cutting up little cartoon faces out of a magazine. She loves to cut, and when she was done, she had a sizable pile of cute square cut-out faces. Then she surveyed the the pile, unsure of what to do with it.
"Mommy, you can have these," she said with a beatific smile.
"Thank you!" I said, wondering how soon I could discard it without her noticing or breaking her heart.
She may have considered this, because she then followed it up with, "Give it to you fwends. And," she added, "be careful when you put you hands in you pockets, so you don't squish them."
Good advice.
So I took the little papers and did, indeed give them out to Zelda and Amira at the JFX office.
Inherent, I believe, in those sweet words, is a universal human fear of mortality and irrelevance. When little Nomi cut up her cute cartoon faces, she didn't want her legacy to go nowhere. She wanted to make sure they would be immortalized, saved, and matter to someone. Don't we all share this fear?
Every person expends effort for different things, and we have a deep human need for those efforts to matter - to be recognized, and to have some sort of lasting impact. Otherwise, we are left feeling insignificant and meaningless - two of the saddest emotions available to humans.
I love when I see universal human emotions in small children. Really, we're all the same - but as adults, we learn to mask and complicate our feelings. In small children, they are so obvious and apparent, and therefore, so much easier to learn from.
Pay attention the next time you interact with or observe a small child. What can you learn about your life?
