Childhood as a mould to life

It’s a strange thing when we try to remember some of our first images from childhood.
There are some flashes in my memory, so far and so fragmented – for example - like me playing
in a place plenty of ducks, in fact little ones, with their yellow plumage. There I was a giant,
stretching my arms and fingers to the floor and getting those cutes pets to embracing them
tenderly. At that time, nowadays people tell me, I was living in a farmstead. These images
represent so little to make a coherent narrative, but, on the other hand, so much to recover some
understanding about my personality. Maybe, the childhood memory is a kind of feelings box
where it’s possible to understand how I perceive happiness, solidarity, curiosity and many other
feelings today.

The sovereign image of happiness from my childhood, for instance, is associated with
Christmas time. It was, and it is until today, the most amazing experience that a child could
experiment with my family. There was a ritual which began at the beginning of December. All
children of my family with my mother always helped to assemble the crib. Every December
morning, when I woke up, she was praying in front of the crib. But during this month gifts
started to appear under the Christmas tree. They had many forms, sizes, colors, all of them
provoking our children’s curiosity. So, at that time, the children only would solve this feeling of
curiosity just in the middle of Christmas night, when it was possible open all those magical
packages.

Nowadays, I feel a kind of sweet missing of this time and of those persons that at
present days are no more between us, but my happiness is renewed every time I see a little child
of my family staring me as an adult who puts gifts under the Christmas tree. So, I pretend to
leave the room of Christmas tree and hide myself from these children eyes, just to enjoy myself
with their curiosity around all those gifts. It’s possible to feel that the little ones are living now a
similar experience as those ones I had had once. In fact, I feel like they are fulfilling their own
feelings box with precious things that today I had preserved into my soul.

There is many other feeling inside this precious box. Some of them are so difficult to
handle, like anger, selfish or fear for example. However, as human beings, we must recognize
all of them and learn how to lead them. In fact, we need to know ourselves to do that, as the old
Socrates had told once a time. By the other hand, there are others so much tender touching the
human nature, like this one that I bring with me and come with Christmas time. Every
December I feel a bit like the god Janus, the one who has two faces (one regarding to the past
and the other to the future), for me that’s a perfect metaphorical image to represent how
childhood works as a mould to life.

Claudio Roberto da Silva