When life throws you to the world....I mean the wolves

     There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to some events in a person's life. No one lives very long without some kind of disaster permeating every aspect of daily living. Some have unbelievably difficult circumstances and others have seemingly no problems whatsoever. Sometimes I think the more difficult lives are the ones in which no problems are obvious. Those problems are subtle and easily brushed aside.         The most difficult problems to understand, at least for me, are the ones that are against the innocent, especially children. Taking into account that at some point we are no longer children, one might wonder when innocence is no longer a factor.
     I'm not sure how many people would argue that a newborn isn't innocent but what about a two year old.  Don't we usually talk about the "terrible twos" as being a time when children begin to "cause" problems?  So maybe 2 years old is when we begin to not be innocent.
    Then around the age of 13 we start to discover our bodies.....and notice other's as well (unless, of course, we are in a family that is prominent in the sexual innuendos, then this can start way earlier). Is that when we lose innocence? For some, that is a whole new world in which we can finally feel like we begin to understand what the world is constantly shoving in our faces through media and group discussions.

     Next we find ourselves at the age of having children.  At this point much of our innocence, or shall we start to call it naïveté, is lost to parenthood and the realization that our parents weren't so far off (unless they were). Children challenge you no matter how many you have(1, 3, 12). I am speaking here of people children, not puppies or kittens. I always felt "my mom must love me" but I also wondered if she loved her dogs more than she loved her children....they WERE her children of choice after all and that fact was never too far from lips. 

    That aside, we all have lessons we learn from having children, even if we desert them, there will always be that nagging in the back of our minds of how we should or should not have done something. They are the biggest learning curve of all! More naïveté is lost here than at any other time in our lives.
After kids, it's all downhill from there.....or is it?
    Then you watch your kids in their grown lives, especially when you had previously patted yourself on the back at the wonderful job you did as a parent. I mean you gave them EVERYTHING about yourself, sacrificed sleep, food, clothing, cleanliness and every other aspect of your individuality only to watch them be adults and you start to wonder about your parenting skills after all. 

    Sometimes they never figure it out, and other times they act according to your teachings. And there it is!!! Your realization that it wasn't yourself you should have focused on. They are adults now. Capable of making choices all on their own, making mistakes, fixing them and also making choices that bless the lives of so many others. 

    These are now individuals you had no concept of when you were teaching them to read. You realize that it mattered how you gave them your time, yes, but the biggest loss of innocence is when you let go of your children and truly support them to make THEIR OWN choices, "right" or "wrong."  
    That's not innocence, you say, that's naïveté! Well, maybe, but think about this. How old do we have to be before we are considered naive instead of innocent? Judgements rule our day. Maybe we all have a bit of both and the confusion turns us against ourselves. Maybe we are all a bit naive so we make naïve mistakes from innocent actions...or vice versa. For some, maybe we never lost part of our innocence, no matter what happens in our lives.