Friendship, as told by a 5-year-old

Trust me, it's better than your rubber chicken networking luncheon

I grew up in a family that believed everyone of us was born sinful - and that we would need to diligently spend the rest of our lives working to be better than our evil human nature.

That never really made sense to me. I’ve struggled to accept the idea that children are born “bad.” My experience with children is that they’re born perfect, and the grown ups spend a lifetime turning them into screwed up adults, too.

I’ve also found some incredible wisdom that can be found in the purity and innocence of a child’s thinking and the way they talk about and view the world.

For instance, I was asking Violet, my just turned 5-year-old granddaughter, to tell me how she met and became friends with her best friend at school. Her answer went something like what follows - but to aid in the understanding, I’ve crafted some illustrations. Yes. With Crayons.

Violet: “We were far apart from each other and we didn’t know each other.”

Violet: “Then there was magic in my brain that shot out and reached into her brain.”

I pressed her a bit.

Me: “You did that? You used magic to ask her to be your friend?”

Violet: “My braid did. And then we talked to each other and said we should be friends.”

I laughed, and thought it was a pretty funny story from a wildly imaginative child.

But then I wondered, and I thought.

Maybe she’s exactly right.

Isn’t that really, under it all, sort of how we all become friends? Isn’t there something that speaks in our minds, our subconscious? Something that stimulates us, something that says this person might be one of my people? And if that other mind feels the same way, you get together, start talking, and say that you should be friends.

Magic.

It might not be what we typically think of it, but when it’s happened for me, it sure feels like magic.