Why Do I Do This Work?
Why do I do this work? Why does it call me from above and from deep within my core? Because it is clear to me that the future of our lives and the balance of our planet rests with the youth, from the twenties on down to the infants, and those yet to come. I believe this—yes, but it is a gut feeling more than a belief. It comes from my whole self, not the head.
Something inside—a fire that burns upward from my solar plexus and chest—spontaneously ignites and fans into a blaze of passionate love and protection that moves out from within me to these young ones. I feel it for the young adults, the teens, young ones, toddlers, babies—still with their fresh eyes and hearts, and their simple and true understandings of the world and the way it works.
I want to protect that innocence, joy, that beginner’s mind and heart that bears such love and understanding. I want to protect it and learn from it so we can grow a new world, the one we have dreamed of—where we live in the reality that we are one people, one spirit in a myriad of diverse forms, living unfettered by the pushes and pulls of “grown up” living that distract from what is real and important.
This is what brings me the greatest joy—to be a champion for the child’s spirit, a guardian of their simple and profound perspective, a fierce warrior for their natural right to live in safety, innocence, and joy.
This is why I do this work. Through this effort, small as it may be on a world scale, I am blessed a billion times over every time I am in their company. Sometimes our meeting results in an outpouring of love and sometimes it is a lesson in staying present with something we both might want to run away from. But I find that as long as I let them in, these authentic humans that we call children have the capacity to keep me truthful. Just one look, one smile, or one simple sentence from them and I know I am in the right place.
- Shakta Khalsa
- Friday, November 10, 2006
