The Wisdom of Children

 

The wisdom of children

Is often misunderstood.

It’s not the wisdom of love

(Although children do love)

Or the wisdom of innocence

(Which is nothing like love at all).

Children are wise

When they’re throwing a tantrum,

As if the borrowed toy

Or the wrong-flavor ice cream

Were infinite tragedy,

Consuming all else –

A singularity of suffering,

A nexus of endless grief.

 

If this moment is the only moment,

Children are wise when they act that way,

Screaming or laughing,

Joyous or deranged,

Utterly swallowed

By the fleeting feeling of now.

 

In middle years we fill up with past and future,

Grudges and projects, injuries and dreams.

Like Marley’s chains they drag us, back and forward,

Bending our backs with the weight of the unreal.

 

And then the load lessens.

The horizon shrinks.

Our old wisdom comes back to us

In a new and calmer guise,

Tempered by a new gratitude

To be feeling anything at all.

 

Only the very old and the very young

Are wise.

They know there is nothing

Beyond this moment,

And their whole hearts are given to it,

Again, and again, and again.