The Similes Of Children

Heard this at Church yesterday:

Child: I really like food. My favorite kind-a food is Chipotle Rice. (eyes widen) I love Chipotle Rice.

Adult: Do you love Chipotle Rice like you love your mother?

Child: (thinks for a moment; confused) No. I love it like I love Chipotle Rice.

And here's the reason I love children. We see them as misunderstanding the question. Silly children, we think. But we are misunderstanding the answer. Things are that simple. Each experience and delight, each pleasure and pain is contingent on and comparable to nothing else. It is it's very own experience. Everything, it seems to us they are foolishly saying in their naivete, is "the greatest ever". But to kids, getting a hit in a baseball game is as awesome and cool and memorable as just that. Getting a "A" is as successful as getting an "A".

As adults, in our vast "experience", we compare everything that happens to us to other things that have happened to us or to others like us. We categorize enjoyment so as not to be too overjoyed. We categorize pain so that we may illustrate our "perspective". We long to be mature in the end. To live out Aristotle's Golden Mean. And we are limiting the moments of our lives in the end. Nothing can ever be the greatest, we reason, for that has passed us by. "This was great, but not as good as that one time 5 years ago."

But one day, I think I'd like to sit down with some Chipotle Rice. I'd like to just get a hit. I'd like to just, with utter simplicity and detachment, be awed and overwhelmed and overjoyed without comparison.

To possess the spirit and similes of children.