Within Each Child – August 11, 2002
Within each child is the potential to change the world.
The power of one person to affect the lives of millions becomes clear when we think of Mohandas Gandhi bringing freedom to India, Abraham Lincoln uniting a country divided by war, or Mother Teresa showing love and compassion for the forgotten outcasts of Asia. But for a moment, picture each of these as a ten-year-old child: Gandhi shy, unsmiling, awkward; Lincoln, lanky and sober; Mother Teresa, a tiny girl named Agnes from a country many people still can’t find on the map. None was marked by any outward sign of what strength lay within them. Each seemed just an ordinary child. And therein is the wonder: ordinary folk can and do make extraordinary differences.
But a child’s potential to bring about change is even greater than this. James Hillman, psychologist and philosopher, writes: “Each child is a gifted child, filled with . . . gifts particular to that child.”1 Every child born will change the world around them, for better or worse, wherever they go; every family, every neighborhood, every school or workplace encountered will be affected by that child’s presence.
The baby bouncing in its crib today will make a difference, great or small, in every sphere of its life as the years unfold. Rather than judging the limits of a child’s potential, imagine how much each child can become. It’s up to us to provide love and encouragement so that ordinary children can become the extraordinary adults they are destined to be.
Program #3808
1. James Hillman, The Soul’s Code (New York: Random House, 1996), 14.