Blogs of Innocence and Experience

As the father of a 4-year-old, I do everything in my power to keep my daughter’s mind protected, soul uncorrupted and life uncomplicated. I want her to have a simple, romantic view of the world, where animals talk, people sing and stories have happy endings.

For now.

As she grows up, a crucial part of her development will be learning that the world is not the candy-colored playgrounds depicted in her My Little Pony Netflix queue. Like William Blake’s famous poems (from which this blog post takes its name), she’ll cross the event horizon of adolescence and adulthood into a world where the innocence of lambs gives way to the fearful symmetry of a tiger, and often, joy to sorrow.

Those lessons are easy –- they’ll naturally occur as she experiences the world in all its gnarled imperfection. She’ll learn that her parents aren’t perfect, politicians lie, and salespeople don’t always have her best interests at heart.

The tricky part is not letting experience transform that innocence into cynicism. It’s a fine balance. Naivety –- viewing the world through a child’s eyes -- is a dangerous way to live as an adult. But a life of world-weary bitterness is cold and lonely.

I can’t say I’ve found equilibrium yet. Despite my sarcasm and journalism-induced skepticism of anything stated as fact, I tend to romanticize the world, idealizing bigger-than-life people, government and institutions. When reality inevitably triumphs, I’m left disheartened and utterly disenchanted. As Byrd says in Len Deighton’s An Expensive Place to Die, cynics are just disappointed romantics. Or as Rick Bayan’s The Cynic’s Dictionary puts it, a cynic is “an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision.”

How do we balance the two extremes? Guarding our heart without  building a wall around it? Accepting that life will break your heart, but refusing to let it break your soul?

Maybe Blake answered it best in Auguries of Innocence:

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.