Reclaiming Innocent
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TAKEN FROM A BLOG POST IN OUR CLASS SITE So, I started thinking about "reclaiming the innocent" in my life, and then took some action on it ... you could say I was 'inspired' ... then I dared - it was a classic undertaking! Perhaps I was a tad agressive in my approach... I was pondering all that we had discussed in class and the descriptions in the Archetypes booklet. Working hard to consider how to make my Innocent score of 23 come more alive, I had the wonderful fortune of 'living-life-again-for-the-first-time' through a story told by my four year old son. Following his third day at preschool, Luke greeted me boisterously and with eager anticipation as I walked through the front door. After giving him a hug, I asked him how his day at school was. "It was great!", he bounded. "Today I made another new friend." He said this with a look of immense satisfaction and a double eyebrow raise for punctuation. "How did you do that?", I asked. He said, "It was easy. She just came up to me and asked me 'Do you want to be my friend?' And, I said 'Sure', so we're friends now Dad." When I asked him what her name was, he said very matter-of-factly "I don't know yet, we just played." We just played. Nice. Innocence. It got me thinking. What if I tried this in our world of grown-up social norms? Is it true that everyone still has their preschool-self at their core, a yearning to be connected to their innocent self? I needed to find out, so I ent out to exhibit my preschool innocent self - and see how people might respond to my attempt at living innocently ... what if I would say hi and ask strangers if they wanted to be my friend? I think you'd be amazed ... sure, some people thought I was a fairly special individual. Most however, were amazingly open to this ridiculous open format of questioning and introduction! I could go on with stories (I lived this experiment for 4 hours one afternoon)... but instead I recommend you try it! In reflection, I kept thinking about "simple honesty in innocence" - it seems transcendent ... like there is a real truth in its essence ... a truth everyone I met could see, and wants to believe in ... Truth and Innocence. Re: The INNOCENT
Oh my god, Greg, that really is inspired! Have you been in contact with any of these people since your 4-hour afternoon of innocence? Your story really brought a smile to my face - thank you :) And then, of course, my adult mind sets in and starts analyzing and questioning. How "innocent" is it possible for us to be, knowing what we know about the world? I wonder what criteria, if any, that little girl used to choose your son as a playmate. I wonder how that compares to the criteria you used. I wonder how self-conscious that little girl was, and how self-conscious you were. But then again, perhaps it doesn't matter. After all, the point of the exercise was not to enter the exact same mindset as your son; it was simply to invite a sense of openness into your life for a few hours. And what a wonderful thing that is. I would love to hear more about how it went :) Cathy Re: The INNOCENT
Hi Cathy, I have been in contact with 2 of them ... makes me laugh just thinking about it. One on facebook, and the other is worth telling you a bit about... Tim Horton's in the afternoon - as I worked the experiment, I too thought I was likely to make bias choices with regard to gender, age, race, etc. So, my method was simply to pick people who came in and sat down ALONE ... Old, young, beautiful, or not did not matter. It was invigorating - one lady Clasene (not sure how to spell that) even bought me a cookie - she said the world needs a few more "cookie people" - sweet and nuts at the same time ... I decided to take that as a compliment... So - as I waited for more 'experimental subjects' to come in and sit down - this one girl - [Betty] (as I later learned) - a 18 year old, did just that. I thought that I ought abort my testing at this point, but against that judgement went over to her table, and said "Hi, my name is Greg, do you want to be my Tim Hortons friend?" (I didn't want her to think I was "creeping", as they say these days). She started laughing and asking if she was on a gag show... we chatted for about 20 minutes, and I was blown away by how free she was to share with me some of the struggles she is going through in her life - recently divorced parents, dirty pool between mom and dad, sister picking sides, etc. **names and personal identification info removed from this post Re: The INNOCENT
Greg..this is exactly what we want to be doing. I love the fact that you borrowed the idea from your son. Your taking the risk..in this age of not trusting adults ( I will send you all an article I wrote about trust ..) It takes courage,,,especially, Cathy, as you say in this world where we have knowledge...remember what Blake says about innocence and urizen...the child is father of the man...we have that innocence as a child...then lose it through reason and experience..but when we get enough experience, we trust that we can handle it if we make a mistake..and trust when we maybe shouldn't...but we are able to embrace the innocent any way... Your story could well be one of the vignettes for our book. We might intersperse our chapters with lovely archetypal stories like this one. Thank you so much for sharing it. Carolyn
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