Yin Yang: Unity of the Opposites

Now that I find myself transitioning from an older girl to a young woman, I find myself seeking more and more wisdom from my elders and trying to leave the behind the beliefs of adolescence. But this Friday, while on a field trip with a 3rd grade class to Golden Gate Park, I was reminded of the beauty that is contained in the simple knowledge children hold. The more I feel like I am being pulled from the ignorant state of childhood, the more overwhelmed and saddened I begin to feel about the world I live in and the fading hope I have in it. In college, or at least at USF, they seem to focus on pointing everything wrong with the world, I guess in hopes that we will go out there and fix it, but it really makes you begin to forget about all the beauty and love that really do exist in the world. That is what I want to thank a little Chinese-German boy for reminded me of when I was saddened by a dead baby turtle we passed by. He said in a very matter of fact and philosophical manner,

"Its ok. Don't you know what Yin and Yang is? There can't be birth without death, there can't be light without dark, there can't be man without woman, good without evil, or heaven without hell. Everything in nature has its opposite and that is what creates balance in the world."

I was more than taken back by the unexpected wisdom that I had just heard from an 8 year old boy. I think all adults can actually learn a lot from children and their simple ideas about the way the world works. At times I find myself creating too much complexity in my own life, when I'm not sure things really need to be so sticky. I want to aspire to actually regain some of my simple cognition that I saw in those students that day. I want to be able to step away from myself one day and think, do things really have to be this difficult? I think I might surprise myself.