innocence, that we lose and that we gain

With wide open eyes full of wonder, an open mind looking for answers, not a hint of suspicion, not a strain of disbelief: these are the images i see when i talk of innocence. An example which can be perceived by almost everyone, is that of a child no more than the age when they just start listening and talking their mind and learn to work things out.

A child is not taught that lies exist by explanations given from parents, but rather, they learn, as the rest of us, of the lies and deceptions through experience. We can relate to this by an easy example, where when we try to get a required reaction from a child, such as to get a child to behave, some of us would offer them ice cream since that would make them listen to us, but the  issue of rewarding them with ice cream is not always upheld. It works the first few times, until the child can piece together that its just an excuse. We can notice this when the same child start asking us our own questions such as: "will you get me ice cream if i behave?" and many other similar cases as well.

We know of innocence as being one where there is no alternative agendas and there is nothing hidden. We lose our innocence when we learn about how harsh our lives can really are and we understand the actual workings of peoples minds and the possibilities of our real intents.

Since we as humans value our lives and we have an amount of self preservation as our priorities, we will look out for ourselves before others. When we look out for ourselves, we also find it in our thought processes that we may need to keep things from other people which sometimes involves a level of lies or deception. This is when we can confirm that the innocence we once had, is lost.

With innocence, goes along a feeling of being naive, since the reason we are innocent, is because we do not know any better. When we do know, we become more thoughtful and think about things before we speak them. People are innocent in different things as they grow up, such as girls are innocent to intimate relationships until they start dating and then they find their way. People are innocent of bargaining until they start bargaining on their own, and many other examples.

The innocent part in all our lives are defined by the people around us. We could not choose our influences and the way we learnt to make decisions, but these things help define ourselves, character and the finally the thought process we use.

We need to be mindful of the innocents around us and treat this as an opportunity to shape their minds to allow them a better understanding than us. We also need to teach the people around us who are innocent about certain things and help them understand better.