To be Childlike: A letter to a Friend

        Below is a letter to a 15-year old who was my coworker for the first month of the summer who has now gone on to go be a 15-year old. 

 Dear Katheryn, 

         The ranch is just a little less alive with you gone. I belleive there is something especially essential about the genuiness of a kitchen and ours is certainly less with your subtraction. 

         As you know I’m a strange guy who thinks about strange things; recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the beauty and goodness of childhood. You are young enough yet to hear this and mature enough still to receive it, so I think I will share some thoughts. 

         Tragically, a great many people become worse as they age, and I think this is because a great many people become less of themselves as they do so. People feel the need to conform to society in order to fulfill some responsibility or to be of some value and they often do so by being less of themselves. We have to grow up of course, but properly “growing up” is realized by becoming a fuller, truer version of one's self. Peter Pan can’t play child in neverland forever lest he become captain hook. 

         As we grow in in responsibility and capability we ought to develop also in wisdom and strength but never to diminish in honesty or love. 

         There is a reason that Christ says children are first in the Kingdom of Heaven, and it’s not merely because they have committed less wrong. 

        Children live in most cases how we all ought to. Children are curious, they are awestruck by everything from rocks to clouds to mice. So too, they are never afraid to proclaim this childlike wonder, in contrast think of how often adults say “WOWWW”, “AWESOME”, or “COOOL”. Prideful adults who ignore the grandeur of God’s creation are quick to dismiss the awestruck remarks of children as naiveté though they could not be more wrong. 

         Children are not bound so strongly to their precious ego’s as we adults are, they maintain no facade and live all the more joyfully for it. Children laugh when they are happy, they dance when they like music, and they tell people that they love them when they do.  When people try to “grow up” they are not always maturing but often merely rejecting these same joys from their lives. 

         Kathryn, you are well beyond your years in maturity and intellect, this much is plain to see and hear. But, in all the good ways you still have the heart of a child. When you find a seat at a table you tell people that you are excited to sit with them. When you dance, you hop and bounce around like an idiot solely because it brings laughter, and you don’t think twice about how it looks. When you go camping with idiots (us) you do not judge people for drunkenness but laugh kindly at them for their own ridiculousness (the elevation really gets to you). Despite your competence you do not see people as opportunities like rungs on a ladder but see them as simply people. 

         Few 15-year olds are so unapologetically happy and that is because few 15-year olds are (forgive the cliché) unapologetically themselves. Never forget the joy of life, never lose your spark. You’re already as smart as the adults and twice as happy, so I challenge you to not fall into the trap of trying to “grow up”, just keep becoming more of yourself. 

 I wish you the best, you can do all the rest. 

 -Henry Koon 

 “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” Matthew 18:3