Vision

I sat on the floor of the bathroom.  My niece (21 months) sat on the "big girl potty" having been promised a reward of M&Ms for her effort.  She leafed through magazines the way some people would half-heartedly leaf through a text book before an exam, skipping large chunks at a time, deeming them irrelevant.  

Keeping her occupied during this process is essential to any expectation of success.  It's simple math.  The longer she sits, the more likely it is that something will happen.  And then we celebrate!  

This day, there was no celebration, but I was proud of her anyway.  She came across an ad for a charity that helps to provide surgery for children with cleft palates.  

She paused.  She paused longer than she'd paused for anything else in that (or any other) magazine.

The ad featured photographs of the faces of a dozen or so children - children from Cambodia, Nairobi, India, and other places far away.  

She pointed at each of the youngsters in turn, saying, "Baby, baby, baby..." 

She looked at their faces, studied their expressions.  She sat and thought for a minute.  

Then she twisted her own face up into an expression I'd never seen her make before.  She was trying to imitate the face that she thought the children in the ad were making.  On her, it turned out somewhere between a goofy smile and a grimace.  She giggled.

She was not old enough to understand that they needed help.  

She was not old enough to know that their circumstance could be grounds for exclusion.  

She was not old enough to judge them.  

She was not old enough to know that she could do these things.  

She had the sincerity to see those children as no different than her.  

She had the openness to see nothing wrong when she looked at them. 

She had the kindness to see people, not problems.

She had the simplicity to see that she could smile back.   

We should all be so lucky - both to have that quality in our own vision and to be looked upon that way.