where has all the innocence gone?

when i was a little boy, i was very curious about the world and what it was, who was in it and where it could take you. I would daydream for hours about the different things that could happen in a lifetime.

one day i would be a top-5 basketball recruit on a straight path to the nba. the next day i was the next willie mays … a blast from the past baseball player who could do it all and do it with a smile the size of lake michigan. another day i was a world-traveler solving crimes like the hardy boys and busting up criminals like the dukes of hazzard while driving a van like the one the a-team drove.

i had a crazy imagination.

i think part of this curiosity came from the incessant reading i did as a kid.

i read everything

hardy boys to henry huggins to biographies about the great American heroes. Books about sports figures and Bible heroes and I would even memorize stats about athletes from the 400-page sports encyclopedia-like book my mom bought me.

books have a way of creating this imaginary world in a kid like me.

as I grew older, my curiosity about the world got stronger, but one thing that stood the test was my belief that people were inherently good.  i really believed the best about people. some of you who know me best probably laugh a bit at that, but it’s true. I always believed the best and thought that everyone would think the best about me.

i never realized that sometimes, people don’t have the same perspective. so now, in my early thirties, I have been struck by this new emotion the last couple of years.

disappointment.

when i was a kid, i could never have imagined that i would ever be disappointed in other christians. i never thought that my favorite sports athletes would let me down. i never thought that a local politician that i know personally and has helped me out in the past, could be considered a bigot and a racist yet shake my hand.

it never crossed my mind that people in positions of authority would take advantage of others. that in a normal day we would hear about sex abuse cases and babies disappearing and domestic assaults on women and foot-stomping athletes.

i guess it just makes me wonder… where has all the innocence gone? i used to love my curiosity and my need to know what was going on in the world. i don’t want that to change. but i wonder what this world has truly come to. how did it happen and where do we go from here? i wish i had a cute solution wrapped in a bow that made us all feel better.

i’m not sure a solution wrapped in a bow is attainable… but i would like to hope that there are still kids growing up with the same curiosity that i did.