Innocence

(Mental Hygiene Series)

7.     “I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder." (Clyde Kilby)

I was tempted to just skip this quote. I’ve never been a fan of Lewis Carroll, who is best known for writing Alice in Wonderland. I never really understood the hoopla about that book—just a bit too phantasmagoric for my taste. Yet, since I’m trying to learn new mental health habits, I decided I should think about this quote a bit.

I realized the reason for my initial resistance to this quote. It harks back to childhood innocence. I don’t remember a phase of ‘pure unclouded brow’. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was born with a skeptical expression. I realized this when I looked at my newborn son and he would stare back with the same wrinkled forehead that I had. His left eyebrow would furrow downward at me with a doubtful expression. If he weren’t just weeks old, I would have wondered what had happened in his life to make him look so cynical!

 

Since I couldn’t remember how it was to have the innocence of a child, I wasn’t sure how to go about cultivating this habit, now, at my age. So, I decided to go for a run. I was about half a mile from my house, when I heard the distinctive call of the Meadow Lark. (It’s the only bird call that I can easily recognize.) I smiled to myself and kept running. Another quarter mile later, I heard yet another distinctive bird call, but this time I had no idea what species it came from. A few minutes later, I passed by some woods and it was like a choir of birds singing. I was just amazed by the complexity of this music. I ran past the woods toward the cornfields. Suddenly a flock of blackbirds took off all together creating this beautiful fluttering sound. Their flight seemed casual compared with the acrobatic murmurations of the European Starlings last fall. As I soaked all this in, I realized something about myself. I might never regain the innocence of a “child of the pure unclouded brow”, but I’m blessed to still have “dreaming eyes of wonder.”