I’m not sure where or how I acquired the ability to make babies and small children cry, but it is something that I have had the cause to notice quite a bit. Now, I have commented in passing about this problem before [1], but this week I have had it happen to me numerous times. After all, we have a couple here from Burma who are related to our Burmese translator (and recent Legacy graduate) who still lives on campus. The husband and wife are the brother and sister-in-law of the graduate, from the Kachin State of northern Burma, and they have brought their four year old son, who truth be told is more than a bit hyper and spoiled and a bit of a brat as well.

However, this child is quite frankly rather terrified of me. I’m not entirely sure about it. I suppose I do give off a fair amount of intensity, a certain look of concern and more than a hint at disapproval for troublemaking. I’m not hostile to small children, even slightly rambunctious ones, but at the same time there is often a sense of distance, as I just don’t feel entirely at ease around them. I have noticed that some people who are energetic and a bit silly seem to be able to happily play with children, but I have found that my generally serious and intense ways, as well as the rather dark thoughts and memories I have of my own childhood, tend to frighten the little ones very easily.

By and large, the children themselves do not have any blame in the matter. I have been known to intimidate fairly large people as well–I must look really serious often, but children have no way of knowing that the way that big people act has very little to do with the children themselves and a lot to do with the big people themselves. I’m certainly not fond of scaring others, for though I will respect their space and the distance they keep, it is rather lonely when people are always at a distance and never very close. It’s hard to know exactly what frightens a child. Oftentimes difference will scare some children, but intensity or ambivalence might as well. Most of the children I have seen (though not all) seem to be the type of little ones that live in the moment and value pleasant immediate surfaces, and that’s not something I tend to be very good at.

When I think about the subject of childhood, as in so many areas of my life, I have the rather unpleasant and uncomfortable reality of trying to prepare for the unknown and seek to provide a happier life for others than I knew myself. Naturally, one would expect that it would be impossible for a happy and safe and spoiled child to understand the ambivalence someone like myself has for such a state given my own rather savage upbringing. When I see children misunderstand my concern and melancholy reflections for something dangerous and hostile, it leads me to wonder whether the distance I have with a lot of other people is something that can be bridged at all. The wellsprings of my own thoughts and emotions are very deep, but the caverns of my heart and mind are places few people feel safe in traveling. Perhaps it is too much to expect babies and small children to understand, but one would think that growing up out of that ignorance would be more common than it is.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/book-review-the-malay-archipelago/