When you’re little, you see the world through rose-colored glasses. You accept people for exactly how they are and hold no bias or prejudice against anyone because, frankly, you don’t know any different. You spend your whole youth learning about the world around you, and you’re innocent, so you don’t think twice when someone looks or acts differently than you. Whether they’re a different race, ethnicity, or religion, it doesn’t matter. Yet, somehow, we lose that perspective as we get older, and somehow, those differences carry more and more weight, and we start building biases and prejudices inside our minds. We view differences as negative instead of a chance to learn, and I’m not sure why.
I’ve never wished to go back in time and be a kid again — and why should I? — but I wish nothing more than to put back on those rose-colored glasses. Even more than that, I wish nothing more than for everyone to sport the same glasses, retain that child-like perspective of unwavering respect and tolerance for others. I like to think I’m an optimist, but the truth is that I straddle the very fine line between optimism and realism. I know the world isn’t all butterflies and rainbows, but I have hope and choose to see the good in people until they prove me otherwise. When it comes to people I know, it hurts when they prove me wrong. It hurts when I finally see someone for who they really are, finally see their true colors, and I realize I never truly knew them. Even more than that, it hurts when I scroll through social media and read the mean, ugly comments that people leave on strangers’ posts. The way that people are so quick to leave hate comments and judge to no end physically hurts my heart, and with each comment, my faith in the world lessens a bit.
Call me naive, but I don’t believe in that kind of a world, a world in which people can’t accept others for who they are or the lives that they live. Learning about people and loving them unconditionally is an amazing thing, and respect and tolerance are necessary for accomplishing that. I don’t think I see the world through rose-colored glasses and I don’t think I have the perspective of a child, but I have a big heart. I have a heart that wants to make everyone happy, and I’ll never understand why some people look down on people like me or why some people break people down instead of building them up. People can be selfish and only choose to see things their way, which isn’t fair. We all live on this planet together — again, call me naive — and we need to coexist underneath a blanket of respect and tolerance for each other. And that goes both ways; there are two sides to every argument, every issue, every perspective, and we need to take the time to push back our selfishness and see the other side, understand their viewpoint.
Even though we all love growing up, I wish we could all see the world as kids do. If we could all go back and feel that love and excitement for everything around us, who knows how the world would change. If we could all love each other as if they were another student in our class, another kid in our neighborhood, or another cousin our age, the world would change. Remember how happy we were running around the playground at recess, eating lunch, and having sleepovers with our friends? How much simpler things were back then? We could learn a lot from the way that children see the world and the people around them, take a chapter from their book and be better. Imagine how things would change. What a world that would be.