Eyes

One of the most strikingly beautiful things about little kids, especially babies, is their eyes. 

For one, their eyes seem huge in comparison to the rest of their face. Fun fact, eyeballs don’t grow much (if at all) during a human’s lifetime. 

The second thing that’s striking is the color of their eyes. Yes, their irises are either blue, brown, or green, but they also have the purest white you’ll ever see. 

Their eyes haven’t been stained yellow, or bloodshot, or damaged by the sun or wind or dirt. 

Little ones haven’t been exposed to what adult eyes have been exposed to — in more ways than one.

There is a level of innocence that we could only wish to get back. As grown men, most of us have seen a lot. You could even argue we’ve seen too much...some of which has been haunting. 

Haunting? What else would you call memories, experiences, and images that pop up at random times, that are next to impossible to expunge from our minds?

A priest once told a story, a parable of sorts, about a young family that was offered the home of their dreams for free under one condition: there were pornographic images hanging on the walls all through the house, and they could not be taken down. This is certainly not a place to raise kids. What could they do? 

Hang pictures over the pornographic images on the walls. Hang pictures that uplift and that point to the good, the true, and the beautiful. 

We need to do the same in ourselves. Many of us have seen too much, and although those memories, experiences, images can’t be erased, they can be replaced.