Innocence

Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about something I’m seeing in myself, and in some other aging people. I feel a little foolish referring to it. I thought at first that it might just go away on its own, but instead it seems to be growing, and shaping a new outlook. My mind is changing. If the truth be told, it is changing despite me, no matter what I think. Life seems to be out ahead of me, shifting things around, drawing me into a new way of seeing. I like it, I fear it, and I go along for the ride. I’ve been kidnapped by Life, and lately, I’ve been stripped down to something quivering and miraculous. I mean I am innocent again, like I was as a child, but now different in some worldly way.

At first I thought it was just a new level of naiveté, revealing how idealistic and ungrounded I am, but now I’m considering another possibility. Thanks to Allan Chinen M.D., a Jungian psychiatrist and author, I ran across a perspective that has begun to re-shape my view. He is a collector of cross-cultural fairytales about the elder years. In one of his books entitled In The Ever After, I found a reference to what he perceived as a form of elder innocence. This got me started thinking. Something in me stirred, and out of that stirring comes these reflections.

When I was a child, like all other children, I was innocent. I basically knew nothing; the world was a total mystery. I was thoroughly amazed by the way of things, and found delight and fear in the moment, as I discovered the world. This is one of the attributes of childhood that is widely referred to as one of the gifts of that age. In some ways, I think that is why childhood is so romanticized. An infants view is rich with fascination, discovery and engagement. Newness coats everything. It is like Christmas morning every moment.

My view of innocence is largely of a time past, a never returning moment when the world was more fascinating than dangerous, and I never had a moments concern about belonging. It was a facet of childhood that is memorable — for its presence, as well as its absence —that is now gone; and that makes babies and infants so compelling. There is something numinous about childhood innocence, a little taste of the miraculousness of life.

Recently, I have begun to think that what I thought was a forever-lost aspect of the past, has returned in a new unexpected form. I find this experience miraculous too. Here is what I mean. I have noticed, and have been experiencing for myself, that as I age, I get wiser, in my case that seems to mean that I know I know less and less. As I’m growing older the world is also becoming more and more mysterious. This is something different from losing my memory. I’m growing more confident in my knowing despite knowing less and less with much certainty. How can that be?

I believe it can be, because a new form of innocence is returning.  Something very adaptive and engaging is setting in. This is not something that is adequately described as the advent of a “second childhood.” This is its own phenomena, a trick of nature, an experiential happening that has a merit and meaning of its own.

Strangely, this development takes a lifetime to happen.  The more one knows, the fuller the life experience, the greater the contact with the unknown. Eventually one realizes that not much is known. When this realization sets in, and becomes a part of one’s day to day experience, a kind of innocence returns. It is an adult innocence, a perception of the amazing anew.

I think it important to highlight the onset of this kind of innocence, because we, as a culture, are currently squandering it. I want, like Allan Chinen, people (especially old people) to know that there is a return to experiencing the world anew that happens specifically in old age. The world is still hanging around waiting for us to know it. Now, like children of the past, and unlike children, we have a matured (ripened) and capable chance to know it more fully. I think our (us old folks) voices are needed for many reasons, but perhaps the most important of them all, is to help re-enchant the world.

This is a natural development, innocence returned, one that reveals how organically humans are woven into the structure of what’s happening. This isn’t the product of spiritual practice, psychology, or any kind of practice of healthy living. It is simply Life having its way with us. It is a shame that old people are largely ignored, and babies are so greatly valued. I don’t think either should be devalued, but for my money, I would bet on the innocence of those who have some sense of what we as a species do. I think that form of innocence is more likely to lead us out of the woods.

When one is innocent like a child, and is an adult, then one enters into a world that has deep and ancient miracles.

In The Ever After by Allan Chinen, M.D., 1989, published by Chiron. It can be found in libraries and on Amazon used.

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