Babies really are just the best.
Pre-motherhood me did not understand how some people seemed to be enamored of every baby they met. Don't get me wrong, I'd known some cool babies before having my own, but I was never very impressed by babies in general until becoming a mother. Now I know the truth: that babies embody many of the good things we adults strive for, or feel we've lost. And they are the purest of us all.
Our culture is way behind on this. Women nowadays fear fertility. Young people find babies gross, needy, demanding, and inconvenient. Which they are.
But as adults, it's so easy to forget we were all babies at one point. Our society is full of evil Headmistress Trunchbulls, expounding on the toxicity of the festering pustules that are children while denying they were once, not really so long ago, a little pustule of screams, snot and tears. And in reality, we should all be grateful that someone chose to put up with us in the pustule stage, because for parents it ain't always easy.
Parents have to put up with their children. Parents have to allow their children safe harbor in their home, make food for children to throw on the floor, and find their list of favorite hobbies reduced to a single word: silence.
Why? you may ask. Why should a fully developed, functioning adult be reduced to a servitor of someone else's needs--particularly a someone who will probably never thank them, even once they learn how to say phrases with more than one syllable?
There are a few good reasons, but all of them pretty much boil down to this: babies are innocent.
Babies have never done anything wrong. On their own, they have no concept of evil. They haven't reached the point where malice becomes interesting to them. No baby will ever want to hurt you.
They're also incredibly self-assured. My toddler waddles around like a tiny drunk, convinced that the entire world loves him. And why shouldn't they? He's a baby, not a pimply teenager or a cynical coworker.
A baby is the least cynical of all people. They live life ready to be pleased with everything, and when something bad happens to them it's an incredible surprise. We find it odd when a baby cries inconsolably over a tiny scrape on their knee or a dropped sippy cup--but imagine if you had lived the entirety of your life without a single thing going wrong (that you were aware of), and then one day you arrived in a place where things go wrong at least once a day, maybe more. That's quite the adjustment for a little pustule brain.
And that's the other really cool thing about babies. They are dang smart.
Oh, I know, they can't pronounce the letter Q and they think lint rollers are hairbrushes. But they are absolute shamwows when it comes to learning new information. They observe and pick up on everything, then next thing you know they're showing you where they hid their shoe when you've been driving yourself crazy for half an hour looking for it. Who's smarter than who now?
Not to mention, teaching babies stuff makes you feel smarter. My toddler can't quite get the last of the yogurt off a spoon, but I can do that without even batting an eye. Take that, babies.
I mean it, babies are awesome. Most of us are just in denial.
Maybe one reason why we tend to be annoyed by children is because a small part of us resents them for their lack of encumbrances. A baby has no problem crying in a public space. You, on the other hand, can't even let yourself have a good cry in the mirror when you're all alone in your apartment--let alone allow another human being to witness your splotchy-faced, tearstained glory. Maybe we all wish someone would just hold us close and feed us, be responsible for our well-being so we wouldn't have to, let us sleep on them and smile at us even when we accidentally yank the hair out of their skull.
We're jealous of babies because we ourselves have lost our baby-ness as we age, and we've become aware of how messed up the world is. In adulthood we stay just as self-centered and entitled as babies, but without the impeccable purity that allows for such indulgences. When I pull your hair now, it's because I wanted to regardless of how it made you feel. When I make unreasonable demands of the cashier at a McDonald's now, it's because I don't care enough to moderate my frustration. The main difference between me and a baby is that I choose to do bad things; a baby may do bad things without knowing what he's choosing.
In that way, the openness and dependency of babies is humanity in its ideal form. And I think the reason we become worse over time is because, for whatever reasons, our sense of security gets stolen as we age. People disappoint us and hurt us. Life makes us uncomfortable, unfulfilled. The world loses its sheen of newness and becomes bland like a plain pita chip.
But what if we could rediscover that sense of security? Then maybe our innocence would find its way back to us. We wouldn't unlearn our knowledge of the world's brokenness, but it would be neutralized by our trust in the One taking care of us, who loves and holds us through all our human nonsense. That's why Jesus told us to become like children.
To overcome ourselves, we have to realize that not only are we dependent on God, but we can depend on Him. And with that confidence we can begin to throw off the burdens of adulthood and become the grown-up babies we were always meant to be.
