Letter #19

My quest for enlightenment has not made me more serious or stoic. It has only made me want to guard the playfulness I share with the people I love more. It has driven me to lean into wonder; to occasionally indulge in mischief. I did not learn this from the great philosophers, I learned this by listening to children. The more I listen to children, the more apparent it becomes to me that we do not respect them and their perspectives. Everything terrible about the world began with this. 

In 2019, I applied to be an instructor at a children’s science camp at my university’s campus. Ahead of the summer camp, I returned to Khartoum to spend Ramadan with my family. That was the year of the massacre. I left home ten days after my friend was killed. 

In an attempt to perhaps guard itself, my brain shut down entirely that summer. I found myself forgetting everything I once knew how to do. The days were a blur. My friends took care of me like a small child. And like a small child, I still knew how to play. That was all I needed to do the job. So I still showed up and I still did it.

In that state, there was no better place for me to be than a classroom. The children arrived every morning bubbling with questions that were often so wildly unrelated to the content of our course that it made me laugh. They were curious about the world in a way I had forgotten was possible. I answered their questions where I could and researched with them when we both didn’t have an answer. When things got existential, I explained to them that there are things no one knows, not even grown-ups. In those situations, we pooled what we did know to make our best educated guesses. 

Like every classroom, mine had ‘trouble-makers’. I did not have the desire or the resolve to punish them for their behaviour. It seemed unproductive; I knew that they would do it again. (I know this because of my own tenure as a troublemaker in the early-mid 2000s). Instead, whenever a child would disrupt the classroom, I’d pull them to the side and ask them - in earnest - why they were behaving that way. They always had a valid reason. And when they were reluctant to speak or couldn’t explain it, I’d observe them until a reason made itself apparent. 

The children who yelled out answers jokingly were mostly afraid of answering and being wrong. They needed affirmation that mistakes were okay. The children who were restless did not understand how time worked and lunch genuinely felt like forever away. They needed a sequence of events. Instead of ‘at noon’, they needed to hear ‘after we finish the experiment’. There were also less profound reasons. Sometimes they were simply bored and needed more challenging work. Sometimes they were hungry, or their laces were tied too tightly. 

What all of the children shared was an assumption that they would not be heard. They cried, screamed or shouted either because they did not know what words to use or did not think that the words would be heard. Once we established lines of communication, we sailed smoothly through the entire summer, following our whims and learning about science in the most colourful ways possible. 

I reflect on that summer often, grateful for the ways that it saved my life. And it did; it was an injection of hope and joy at an incredibly dark time. It reminded me of the curiosity that drove me to STEM in the first place. All the compassion I extended to the kids reflected inwards and I have since become kinder to myself and my own needs. 

Lately, it’s been coming up as I have been reflecting on the experience of childhood - my own and universally. I can not do this without feeling a deep anger on behalf of children. So casually, we punish them for their honesty, their curiosity and their rightful confusion about the world. We do this relentlessly until the children grow up to be adults who inevitably repeat the cycle.

The disrespect that children face is entrenched in a dismissal of anything that is not tangible. When they cry, shout or misbehave, we want them to stop because it annoys us, ignoring that they are communicating something. And while the threat they’re upset about may not be proportional in our eyes, it feels detrimental to them. There are ways to communicate this back; to use our larger knowledge to reassure them. In the dismissive ways we respond to children’s feelings, we are telling them - and ourselves - that something feeling bad is not good enough a reason to not do it. This is a dangerous precedent to set. 

Even the world’s attitude towards naivete and hopefulness is a discredit to the perspective of children. They have the ability to enjoy a present moment not regarding the pain that could follow. They can imagine a world where anything can happen, unencumbered by cynicism or jadedness. So many people consider this to be a ridiculous way of living. They can not wait to ‘burst a child’s bubble’ and bring them back to reality. To those people, I ask: what determines that your reality is more real? The fact that the limitations you imposed upon yourself have indeed limited you? And when you have taken yourself out of a happy moment to predict a forthcoming pain, did that make the pain hurt any less? 

Ultimately, the disregard children face is rooted in a belief that they are extensions of us that we must control instead of separate individuals that we should try to understand. We project the harshness with which we regard our feelings onto them. We ascribe intent to actions borne out of confusion or hurt. No child sets out to cause harm. They simply have needs that we must all make an effort to understand and then guard and provide. 

Our attitude towards children creates a world where we look at those with less power than us as beings we must control. It creates a world where anything intangible does not matter, and feelings - whether negative or positive - are not enough of a driving force. It creates a world where cynicism is admired and hopefulness is falsely assumed to be a sign of lesser intelligence. It makes the world a much more miserable place, for children and the rest of us alike. 

My advice this holy month - for those who wish to take it - is to put the self-help and philosophy books down and spend time with the children in your community. Listen to them. Honour their perspective. There is a lot we can learn from it. 

Write to me about it. 

Ramadan Kareem. 

Salam,

Dinan Alasad