Reflections

Happiness

DANCIN’ IN THE RAIN 

So what if it drizzles

And dribbles and drips?

I’ll splash in the garden,

I’ll dance on the roof.

Let it rain on my skin,

It can’t get in—

I’m waterproof.   

(Shel Silverstein, Falling Up, p. 108, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 1996)

I have always thought of Shel Silverstein as someone who not only understands children, but as someone who also understands and lives in childhood. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of 10 Conversations You Need to Have with Your Children, Regan Books, New York, 2006), writes:

A PERSON WHO WAS TRULY A CHILD FIRST,

A PERSON WHO EXPERIENCED LIFE AS

SOMETHING WONDERFUL AND AWE-INSPIRING,

TAKES THAT WITH HIM INTO ADULTHOOD. (p. 35)

Rabbi Boteach informed his children that their saba, his father, needed to be a man from the time he was a boy, that he had braced himself to deal with the world as the man in the family, and, consequently, had never experienced his childhood, hand never enjoyed any “inner youthfulness.” (p. 36) So, he told his children, it was their job to teach their saba about childhood, to play with him. Rabbi Boteach maintains that childhood “isn’t just a transient phase—that it isn’t meant to be ephemeral…[Childhood] is a critical phase in life, one that [we] are supposed to internalize tnd carry with [us] into the future.” (p.37) Rabbi Boteach desired for his own children that they grow up to be mature, responsible adults but that they also keep a child at their center, as their inner core. He taught them about the cherubim at the gates of the Garden of Eden and told them that leaving the Garden means growing up, facing hardship, disappointment, and pain. Even so, he promised his children, if they remembered to keep their inner child alive, if they would “cultivate and nourish” it, that child would always lead them back to Paradise. They would “always have Eden on the inside…and would never give up hope, because [they had] been to Paradise and [could] revisit it as often” as they liked. (p. 38)

Rabbi Boteach extols the perfect person as one who “has managed to fuse the child with the adult,” as someone who demonstrates the virtues of being an adult: responsibility, capability, strength, ability to learn from the breadth of life and to gain wisdom from experience.”  (p.39)

However, he acknowledges the disadvantages of adulthood: a history of having been hurt and the presence of scars; increasing ambition and aggressiveness accompanied by increasing cynicism; knowledge ot the power of others to betray trust; decreasing sensitivity, and the awareness that people are not necessarily as kind and good as we would desire. Adults, Rabbi Boteach explains, “tend to lose interest in playing with others. “ They lose the positive characteristics of children: The love of sharing, the openness, the tenderness, the novelty, the curiosity about life, and the spontaneity. While children “haven’t been diminished by setbacks…[are] not self-conscious about being need, or about showing [others] that they want love.” (p.39)

The lessons of staying in the moment; f living life to its fullest; of experiencing joy and laughter as to their fullest; of taking time and making time for each other and for fun—these are the lessons we can give our children as we move through this joyous festival of Sukkot and into the New Year.