They know happiness is their God-given right.
I heard this the other day -- that children never cry from joy -- and I got shivers at the realization of how true it was.
Adults cry from happiness. They feel overwhelmed with joy. They don't expect life or a moment to be full of joy, so they're overwhelmed when it happens.
Children, especially young children, are closer to God, because they haven't yet been messed up by adults who are trying to convince them to look outside themselves for answers. Adults want children to look to their parents for answers and direction, to look to their teachers, to look to their clergy. As a society, we do everything we can to make children believe that they can't have their own relationship with All That Is, but that they must go through adults (who often feel miserable and beat down by life and want everyone else to feel the same) to get to God.
Young children will cry instantly when they're upset. Adults will try to stop tears of upset, or otherwise apologize for crying. Because, you know, it's unseemly. Even at funerals, people will wear dark glasses so others don't have to be subjected to their grief.
Tears, whether happy or sad, are always a release of resistance, which is why everyone always feels better after a crying jag. Abraham-Hicks defines resistance as choosing the unwanted from the vast variety of life and trying to hold the unwanted away. (As opposed to simply choosing what one wants, which is natural.) Via crying, young children go very quickly from resistance back to experiencing something they want. They instinctively shift to what they want, rather than trying to stay in opposition to what they don't want.
Adults are so accustomed to living a life of trying to push the unwanted away (rather that allowing themselves the joy of what they prefer) that they cry with happiness when something desired actually happens, because it's so unbelievable. If they lived a life of choosing what they want, rather than trying to stop what they don't want, then they wouldn't be overwhelmed when something joyous happens. As with young children, experiencing joy would be a natural part of everyday life.
I was contemplating this because of recently being overwhelmed with ecstasy when my horse Authentic won the Kentucky Derby. I wasn't a sobbing mess the way I'd been when American Pharoah won the Triple Crown in 2015 -- the first since 1978 -- and the entire racing industry had pretty much given up on the idea of there ever being another Triple Crown winner. Giving up is the same as "letting go and letting God" -- and so lo and behold, there was another Triple Crown winner. And yet another just three years later.
I have followed racing since the age of ten. I know the, literally, millions of things that can go wrong when one is pointing for a specific race at a specific time. That one moment in time. On top of all the "reasons why this is unlikely to happen" is the fact that, in horse racing, one is partnering with a living animal that has its own preferences and feelings. That was illustrated all the more strongly twenty minutes before post time on Saturday when Authentic's stablemate, Thousand Words, flipped over in the paddock and was an automatic scratch. That could have easily been Authentic.
So, I didn't have much investment in the outcome. I knew it was defying amazing odds to even make it to the starting gate on that particular day at that particular time. Therefore, when the most amazing thing happened -- that moment in the time, that moment some 200 yards before the finish when it was apparent that heavy favorite Tiz the Law wasn't going to get by Authentic -- a feeling unlike any other I have experience overwhelmed. Not so much expressed in tears -- though there had to be some, because I know I was later discarding used Kleenex (pardon me, while I grab another) -- but just a deep guttural sounds or something that took away my voice when my brother called during the first commercial break after the race. The next couple of days, my body ached all over. I'm sure I didn't fall or anything, but I know I was on the floor in worship and disbelief that this event, that I didn't even know how to yearn for, had happened in my life.
So, was that its own release of resistance? I suppose so. I wasn't ever a "negative Nancy" about Authentic's chances, but nor was I telling everyone how I thought he'd win. But then, I don't do that, anyway. I rarely pretend I "know" what's going to happen in the future. I just try to point to what I want to happen. With racing, it's not a "pure point", because I have so much momentum on my awareness of the possible fallabilites.
Thus, the joy rushed in and overwhelmed.
That wouldn't happen to a child. They already know that "there's always another level of joy to reach for."
Comentários