Jim Cosgrove: When world events get me down, I listen to the children

Our older daughter turns 11 at the end of this month. And while she’s excited about her birthday, something is bugging her. She’s not crazy about the idea of growing up. I’m not crazy about it either.

She told me last week that she misses her carefree younger years when she was unaware of the realities of the world. She said she doesn’t like knowing that bad things happen, that evil people really do exist and aren’t just characters in books or movies.

“Sometimes it keeps me awake at night,” she said.

In school she watches a weekly program that recaps national and international events, and she often chimes in with questions when my wife and I are discussing the news.

Recently she walked into our home office and looked over my shoulder while I was reading an online story about Aylan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian refugee whose body washed up on a Turkish beach.

When she asked what I was reading, I told her the story and how sad and helpless I felt.

Aylan’s story is heart wrenching on so many levels and should gut-punch us all right out of our complacent stupors. His story is yet another stinging reminder of how our species has collectively and monumentally failed in our responsibility to care for the least of our own. We can point fingers and place blame, but we all failed that little boy, his brother and mother who drowned with him, and his heartbroken father.

And our failure is not limited to the refugees. We regularly fail crime victims and the incarcerated. We fail the police, firefighters and our veterans. And every day we fail the marginalized, the poor, the undereducated and the underemployed in our society — and some have the audacity to blame them for their plights.

I try to teach our girls that nothing else in our lives matters more than loving each other and making sure that we all survive. And I don’t mean just our family, I mean everybody. Nothing else is more important. Not our theologies or our politics or our borders. Not our egos or our reputations or our stuff.

Later, when we were talking about all of this, my daughter said something very insightful.

“You know, a lot of people read stories about tragedies and then shrug and say, ‘Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it.’ And then they go on with their lives. But there is something they can do. What if everybody did just one thing — even something small — like donating money or clothes or volunteering at a homeless shelter? Then there wouldn’t be so many problems.”

Exactly. With that modest insight, she has, once again, proven what I’ve always known — kids are a lot smarter than adults. They can look at a challenge and instantly come up with a simple, intuitive solution. Adults like to complicate things.

So, let’s dispense with the distractions of fear and greed and hatred. Let’s start thinking like kids, and get down to the business of love.

This story was originally published September 13, 2015 at 6:10 AM with the headline "Jim Cosgrove: When world events get me down, I listen to the children."