Should A Child Be So Bold?

A true war story from a man who lives one day at a time

Have you ever witnessed wars? Most of us have not. Recently I talked to a man who, as a kid, witnessed the fight for independence in a Central African nation.

The fight for independence was brutal and bloody. Colonial troops sought to repress nationalist voices and fighters in the 60s. Their preferred tactic was to divide and conquer by inciting villages to fight against one another. While someone has not largely written about the struggle for independence in the history books of the country, many who witnessed the violence say the ‘dirty war’ transformed their lives. As the story has a strong historical taste around colonialism, the boldness of the child impressed me.

I wonder how a six-year-old boy walked calmly amid a war zone to get his dinner.

That boy decided not to neglect his own needs. He recognized the difference between what-ifs and what is by choosing to focus more on the happy moments than on the painful or stressful ones.

Imagine how anxious his mum was, as well as the rest of the people hiding in the coffee plantation. They all struggled to accept the realities of right here, right now. The day could have been their last one.

By actively choosing how to make sense of his experience, the boy discovered that happiness is a mindset that is born from the conscious embrace of life as it is, with boldness.

He brought the dinner back and shared it with all. Everyone was glad to experience a moment of presence in the middle of the catastrophe.

The innocence of the boy persuaded fighters to cease brutality. As conflicts grow more complicated in our lives, we programmed our brains to fight or fly. It takes courage and presence to stay in the middle, neither to fight nor to fly. The choice of the child got the chief fighter to remember his humanity from somewhere in the far nebulous distance.

The man who told me the story still lives one day at a time today. Taking things one day at a time can make life a lot more manageable. He does not worry a lot about what might be, or what might have been. Otherwise, he will miss what is happening around him.

You can know where you want to be in a year or two, but you can choose to only focus your attention on today.

Be bold like a child. Live one day at a time, and do what you can today because that’s the only phase of time that you can control.

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