In our babies we trust

In our babies we trust
by Sean Cutshall

I have a theory growing inside my head, and it is continuing to build momentum with each day I spend with my six month old daughter. I believe some of the answers to life's most basic questions and problems can be found by simply watching the actions of our young children, specifically those in the first couple years of their life.

Don't misunderstand my background or qualifications here, this is a theory, and one built upon some time spent in one of my favorite sports, extreme mental daydreaming. I'm a first time parent here, but I've made some relatively monumental realizations in the last six months. You can say it's just conicidence, but I see the tools to understanding trying to crawl right in front of me. Is it possible that before we, as humans, were influenced, taught or forced to think or judge certain things a certain way, we were more capable of living fully, without all the questions and unknown answers in our lives.

Even at six months old, my daughter taught me lessons I never would have imagined. She is beyond being "duped" by motives or actions not fitting into her basic survival needs. I, as her father, can try to convince her to be happy and awake, because it is what I feel is best for that moment, due to schedule or awareness of surroundings, but my daughter cannot or will not fake the feeling for any outside motivation. I watch her closely, some times for hours, and she is more in tune with her basic survival needs, and unwilling to hinder any of those needs by stepping outside that response. If I as an adult could only be so rigid.

As an adult, I feel so much time is wasted in the stress of life, and life's unknowns. Is it possible, my life was never suppossed to stretch outside the responses to my basic survival needs. And if it did, again, is it possible there is a simple and prevoked response innate in me for that subject. My daughter shows me daily if she is hungry, and distracting her with shiny doll, shiny miniature car, with shiny, bright wheels doesn't change her focus and determination to be fed. And, even in my relatively short time as a father, I can gurantee if my daughter is tired, she is not seeking a hot liquid, composed of ground up beans, to help her current state of being tired. She is tired, and only one response will match that current, basic need: sleep.

I know life is not this simple and concrete, and that as we grow older, we are given more stimuli and more complex things to deal with on a daily basis. But, I disagree that life can't sometimes be this simple, and that some of life's answers and motivation can be found by looking at how we lived very early on in our own life. If you are opening a bright colored cookie wrapper, my daughter doesn't care your color, your weight or your background. Her interest, curiosity is just the same.

I am grateful for the chance to be a father. I cherish today, and live today through the eyes of my daughter. Initially scared of how I would teach her to live a life I haven't quite successfully lived myself, today, I realize more and more she is the perfect teacher, and living life is what she already knows how to do. As a parent, I'm beginning to see my job more clearly. It is not to teach her to live, it is to shield her from all the negaive influences that will distract her from living the way she instinctively knows already. I am a father, and I will do anything to protect the understanding of life she already has. I am