A Child of Christmas

Festive holidays are a great time for philosophical reflection. It is time for another one of my rambling posts on...whatever that pops into my head at the moment.

It is raining outside, and rain usually brings a certain feeling of nostalgia--I remember the fresh smell of the wet grass in the garden of my childhood home, the cacophonous croaks of frogs somewhere in the distant, the dark looming foliage of rubber trees, all wet and damp under the incessant patter of raindrops, and especially on nights like these--Christmas Eve--a certain feeling of peace and contentment envelops the night.

On nights like this I feel forever a child, and even at my age, I feel as if I've never outgrown that childhood sense of wonder and beauty, of carelessness and curiosity. It is a childhood innocence that is at once naive and noble.

This Wordsworthian conception of childhood has always been a part of my soul. Even when life plunges me into depths of despair, I would stare into the abyss, and see the child staring back at me. It is what gives me strength. It is what reaffirms life. It is what keeps me out of the abyss.

Newton famously said that he felt as if he was a child playing on a shore, engrossed in the beauty of pebbles and shells while the great ocean of truth still lay undiscovered before him. The great man knew how little we know about our universe, how much there is to learn, how humbly small that we as humans stand before the great immensity that is space and time.

It is the knowledge of our smallness before a greatness, a greatness which some reverentially refers to as 'God', that makes all children. And it is this enchanted child within all of us that saves us from the dreariness of everyday life. The saviour has always been within us. No one sees more awe and beauty than the child. And as long as we do not crucify the child within, we are the Messiah of our own fate.