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A Little Girl (Chase Miller - Lafayette, LA)

 


Tonight, I wanted to write about a little girl. Not necessarily a little girl in particular, but about the very soul of one.

Do you remember the days growing up where the things you focused on in the world were so incredibly simple? The vulnerability just jumped from your skin.You could take something so small like a little lizard running up the side of your childhood home and create a story for that tiny, precious life. You'd be able to create an entire back story. The lizard wanted to be an explorer. Climbing up limestone on a daring adventure to find sunlight or maybe it's lost brother. Something just so very pure was something you couldn't look past.

Now imagine a small girl, looking at life and finding the untouched beauty in her perspective on such a fast-paced, moving world. Oh the things we could learn from someone so innocent. You want to do everything you can to protect her from what is out there for her to learn. You would do anything to maintain her simplicity, her naivety.

What I find so perplexing is how we could look down on such an admirable trait. To be lost in a place of so much wonder and mystery.

Here I am, sitting at my desk at 1:26am imagining that just for a moment, I could channel my inner 7 year-old girl. So I understand, that probably screams pedo and creepy on a bunch of levels. Obviously, I'm self-aware enough to know that I'm a 25-year old man and I'm very comfortable with that security. (Man, do we live in age where we have to justify so much; obviously I'm having a stereotypical quarter-life existential crisis if that wasn't evident.)

Back to being a little girl...or actually, we've moved on a bit. Now we're discussing a little girl who is in the process of growing. We've advanced from being the silly age of seven, we've let a few years go by and more vulnerability has been stripped away with pain. Here we are, imaging the life of a 12 year-old girl. She's been socialized a bit more at this point (sorry to make her sound like a dog). She's had to deal with the pain of a social world. She's had to co-exist with a fledgling culture established around gender roles. She's been told by the other girls on the playground that she has to be pretty. That she has to be funny, and popular, and that she has to get Billy to have a crush on her. What am I getting at here? Well, isn't it clear? She's searching for validation.

At 12-years old, this slightly older, little girl has to deal with social acceptance. A concept that begins to mar the very thing that made her so bright and starry-eyed in the first place. She's brought into an existence, witnessing nature in it's rawest form, and wondering how she can create and preserve it's beauty herself. Then she's told to worry about how to keep that beauty alive in herself, or more so the appearance of herself. I guess, I'm bringing to light the issue that women have to face from the deep patriarchy society that we live in. But that's not my message here, and I apologize if I have confused you at this point in this rambling wall of text.

What I'm trying to say is that I admire her beauty. I admire the beauty that we all share at such a tender age. I fear for that simplicity, because it's so fleeting. By the time we're in middle school, we lose so much of that child-like wonder because we're thrown into pain. We're given to a crowd that begs for you to perform a role that only they want you to be. And it has gotten so much worse during an age in which the internet exists. That crowd has exponentially multiplied and now we have to perform to even greater standard.

Yet, I'm finding a contradiction as I write my next words. I want to say, sure, that innocence is broken down and then formed into strength. Such as a muscle is torn down to a point where it can grow back stronger. But that doesn't seem right to me. Why can't little girls maintain their strength and their innocence simultaneously? Why can't anyone be able to see the stillness in the world, and not allow that beauty to let us get hurt when the pain surprises us with it's ugliness?

I wonder, how can we aspire to be more like a little girl? How do we stay innocent? Because I'm starting to discover that that gentleness is far stronger than any pain that we should and do endure.

What's my take away after saying all this?  When life gets you down,  remember that little girl who lives deep inside all of us. Yes, boys and all other gender identities, this applies to you too.

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