The kind of smile that only a true innocent can
admin on Sep 21st 2008
It seems to me that the emotions Fear and Joy may just be tied together mentally a little closer than you might think. On a trip home from work last week I found myself stopped at a major street intersection. A young woman was pushing a parapalegic child in a wheelchair across the street at the light. While the sight itself was nothing spectacular there was for a brief moment a flash of something amazing. This street has eight traffic lanes, four going in either direction. As the woman started to get close to my car maybe three fourths of the way across, the light changed. It was at this moment that the “flash” happened.
You’re probably thinking somebody got run over… but no. Inside the back of all our minds is fear. Fear is the driving power that turns the entire of living biengs to do what they do. As the light changed I could see the fear awaken in the woman who was pushing the chair. I’m not sure if it was fear that she would be run over, but it was self preservation. If the child had been hurt it would have affected her so either way it was a fear awakened.
At the same moment she began to attempt to run pushing the wheelchair. Held back by the fear of running too fast and causing harm to her passenger. Forced foreward by hear fear of getting hurt in traffic. The woman was for a brief moment in quite a dilemma. I could see it in her face and in her body language.
It was then that the child began to smile. Most of the way across the street the child had been almost lifeless. Doomed to a life of setting in a chair there isn’t much to really get a child like that excited. I can’t say for sure if it was the excitement of running really fast in traffic or if it was the knowledge that her caretaker was freaking out, but something got that child smiling. It was the kind of smile that only a true innocent can produce. The sort of thing that stops you in your tracks just to gaze in awe of it.
For one person this same impulse brought an almost crippling fear. For another only mere inches away it brought about a joy that made her smile gleam. Fear and Joy really arent that far apart.
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