In meeting people for the first time, it should always be a practice to utilize one’s intuitiveness…in an almost subliminal way.

This is done by choosing to view most folks…as if they were all just eight years old!

Think back to the time in your life when you began navigating the social relationships with others and what initiated your perceptions for friend or foe?

Realizing of course, that this was long before you had organized your contacts into colleagues and associates…hum?

You may remember your behaviors and what began to formulate your daily routines and rituals. If you think back and focus using greater clarity you may also recall what shaped your uniqueness, as well as your individual tastes, interests and the embracing or repelling of certain personalities.

HOME SWEET HOME…OR?

The evolving attitudes in viewing what we would learned to appreciate from the world was shaped and honed by the time we were eight years old by mostly our parent and or sibling models.

Keeping in mind that not all children have two parents or siblings. There are situations where absenteeism of an official parent’s model is not available in some situations, such as foster care!

My point here isn’t whether the official parenting role models or brothers and sisters have been involved but, possibly other significant adults or alders that may have played a surrogate deputized role for what appeared as a parent model to an eight year old.

In that of our parents (or surrogate parents) being good or bad role models, these influences set the stage for us as children at the time to learn how to figure out the world.

Equally important…our parent models promoted comfort or discomfort in their interpretations and incompatibilities for the world and these are what greatly influence how we come to fit into our own evolving world!

So…in viewing everyone as an eight year old it seems to me to unmask the advancing sophistication and complexities of emotional issues that become part of one’s adult idiosyncrasies and or anti-social behaviors, which may become cloaked in a shroud of distraction later in life.

THE CORE INDIVIDUAL…

I believe the eight year old that is inside each and every one of us is much closer to the “Core Individual” than often anything representative in the exhibitions that are portrayed in our adulthood’s attempts at interaction with one another.

THE CORE PERSON AT 8-YEARS OLD…?

In his final moments, an 8-year-old boy managed to rescue six people including two younger children from a burning mobile home in upstate New York.

However, in a last-ditch effort to save his disabled grandfather it cost the boy his life!

An 8-year-old girl helped her mom deliver a 5 lb., 10 oz. baby with guidance from the 911-operator.

This “middle childhood period” brings many changes to one’s life. By 8-years-old children can perform many functions well beyond the basics such as; dressing themselves, catching or throwing a ball, and tying their shoes.

For most of us, we have discovered our independence from our immediate family and began to sample other realities that existed in our friend’s paralleling family dynamics.

In evaluating these, we make comparative assessments for the loving tones and octaves of the music being played, as well as the musicians and the conductor of the melody’s literary language!

In starting school, we began to have regular contact with the larger world. Our friendships became more and more important to us in the formulations of our views. These views culminated into how we see others as well as ourselves.

This is where I believe our parent’s critiques of our developing associations were most often very appropriate;

“Show me your friends, and I show you who you are!”

For in choosing our alliances at 8-years old, it would chart a course for tranquil water or stormy seas for the upcoming voyage of adolescence and what lay beyond the horizon!

At eight, our physical, social, and mental skills were developed enough to begin to apply ourselves to acquiring the results that we desired, or at least believed we desired?

This was a critical time for all of us as children because this is when we also began to develop self confidence in all areas of life, through family, friends, schoolwork, and other self identifying accomplishments.

THE OUTER SHELL…

At 8-years-old our inner core begins to develop the protective harder exterior shell. The innocence that “is” begins to experience some of the displeasure that life has to offer and in such, these experiences can also begin to give cause for shaping the potter’s clay into unrecognizable forms.

What I mean from this metaphor is, if a baptism by fire subjects the clay to the flash of an oven baked heat in life, then the conforming personality characteristics may morph into unrecognizable forms and harden. As a result, that face shown to the world is what the world will see and of course react to as a beautiful character / personality or an ugly one.

Important to note…

Some can become prematurely hardened, which can result in their exterior shell resembling an unrecognizable person to one’s self yet, this can be the person that others see residing in our core being.

So…in my observations, I seek to discover the truest and simplest meaning from the people that I meet and therefore, I always seek to discover that inner core 8-year-old in the opportunity of introduction to others.

Matthew 18:

1 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,

3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.

It’s not always possible and in some rare cases that person’s inner core 8-year-old may have not been one that I would have chosen as a friend, even at 8-years-old!

So my point here is,…that in viewing others, especially folks that may possess potential for contributing meaningfulness to your life, it should require us to break it down to the simplest form of friendship.

After all,…it was from these types of friendships,…that the simplicity of our inner 8-year-olds weren’t as prone to the influences and damages that become inflected and incurred by inflated egos, lustful pursuits, indulgences in gluttony, and other human weaknesses!

I find seeking the peacefulness of the inner 8-year-old in others, more often promotes opportunities for life long friendships, and ones that can be trusted without suspect!

I also believe that this is mainly because truth runs deeper than deceptiveness, and in the chemistry of our inner core as human beings, we rely upon our soul’s innate intuitiveness to sense the sincerity in others.

In looking “into” others in such a way, the pureness of their soul’s origins that resides in innocence, subjugates the calamities of hypocrisy, and provides us with an opportunity to discard our critiquing focus upon one’s faults and shortcomings?

In doing so…it can hold us all more accountable for receiving the gifts and fulfilling the obligations of building upon and holding dear those 8-year-old friendships, for life!

I would like to thank all my friends that feel safe enough to show me the pleasure of being 8-years old at times, and who love me enough to except me at that age, as well!

Michael Chaffee