The Searing Honesty of Children.....

I had an interesting lesson in honesty this afternoon. I was at one of my favourite beaches. I know the owner, his wife and their daughter quite well. Their daughter is 11 and we teach each other the odd word in our native languages. She in Greek and me in English.

She pretty much rattled off 1 to 30 for me in English and I was about to go when she demanded that I do the same for her in Greek.

And so I started.

To my complete and utter horror (initally) she pegged her fingers and thumb over her nose as I was speaking to her (I was about a foot away).

There was no disguising what she was doing.

Clearly my breath had not had the benefit of anything remotely minty or fresh smelling. No the reverse was true... Kremithi? I asked her (onions for the non Greek speaking ones amongst you) – I had literally JUST guzzled down an enormous oniony Greek salad. Yes, she said. Phew, thinks me. I mean Good Lord, what if she’d said NO... What if I really had horrible non oniony but something equally horribly smelling breath (or maybe it was onions AND horribly smelling breath...... hold up, I could get seriously paranoid – my oral hygiene is fine, relax Kimbo......).

Anyway, back to the story... Yes, she said.

So I regaled my Greek 1 – 30 from a safe distance of some feet and she stopped holding her nose.

It’s the same when I try to speak Greek to the kids. None of your smiling politely when you inadvertently accuse the moon of being traffic lights (fegari/fanari – it’s an easy mistake to make). Oh no. The kids correct you immediately. No embarrassment, no shame, no inhibitions, they just let rip. How fabulous. Because when it comes from kids it’s just exactly what it is – you made a mistake, they’re correcting you. Just as they would be corrected. No agenda. No ulterior desire to feel superior. No being embarrassed at the prospect of embarrassing YOU. Nope. Just straight forward correcting. Very refreshing. I can’t help but think that there might be one or two lessons in here somewhere.

It’s way too cheesy to say that kids have a lot to teach us. But they DO. The older I get the more I see it.

And it got me thinking about intention. The kids (or at least the ones that correct me) if anything find it hysterically funny when I mispronounce something or make a mistake. They laugh and correct me. What a beautiful way to learn. With joy. With laughter. No malice intended. Just an amusement at unwittingly pronounced words. I think that’s pretty cool. No malice intended either when Nicoletta held her nose to escape my onion breath. Just an acknowledgement of how it was for her. Can you imagine if we were all so searingly honest? I wonder how different the world would look....

Well, society says we can’t do that. We can’t go around telling people that they have bad breath even if we’re in danger of being knocked out by it. But we can consider our intentions when we deal with other people. We can consider our motivations for the things we say. Is it genuinely to help the other person or to signal our discomfort or are we coming from a place of superiority or criticism (which pretty much amounts to the same thing in my book)? Is our intention to help others with humour and compassion? I wish I could say that this were always the case for me, but I’m a human being. Certainly not perfect.

So my goal this week is to check my motivation and my intention when I’m passing information on. If it’s not coming from an entirely wholesome place, I’ll ask myself what lies beneath it (generally for me it’s insecurity). If I catch my behaviour I have half a chance of correcting it (with the same humour and compassion that I would pass to anyone else).

Let the week commence (so what if it’s Wednesday......)!