Children, above all, are characterized by their capacity to grow.
A child can learn more easily. A child is growing physically. Someone lost a baby once. 40 years later she was found, a big, strong woman with children of her own.
What is this capacity for growth?
This is a wonderful thing! After all, what is childhood but a time when you can grow?
A time when you can grow in wonder to become a Steven Spielberg or a Newton or Einstein, or an explorer like Neil Armstrong!
This is a wonderful thing!
What is it?
First of all, it is a characteristic of the body.
Everyone has a mind that can grow.
What makes a child different is that their body has such great potential for growth as well!
The mind's potential to grow is often only limited, if even by this, by the brain.
A child's brain, like the rest of their body, has immense capacity for growth.
What is this?
It is two things.
One: living tissue that can grow.
Bones with ends that are still growing. Things like that.
And one other thing.
A child's body has extremely low levels of entropy.
Disorder.
A child's body has extremely low levels of disorder.
You can increase the entropy of a child's body considerably and still have very low levels of entropy.
Like new.
In the course of any significant physical change, entropy, disorder, is likely to increase.
A child's body has such low levels of entropy that the entropy, the level of disorder, can increase greatly and still be very low.
Take an adult's body and grow a lot, and that body will likely be worn down and old.
Growing is an effort. It ain't easy.
But a child's body has such low levels of disorder that you can grow a lot, into a big, strong adult, and the levels of disorder, though they have increased a lot, will still be very low.
Almost like new.
Almost like a Toyota or a 57 Chevy straight from the factory.
Even though entropy, disorder, has increased a lot.
That is capacity for growth.
Immense capacity.
Everyone has a mind that can grow.
If your mind cannot grow because it has grown old, that's only because the brain has grown old, and the brain is holding it back.
The mind itself never grows old, and can always still grow, as long as it does not fight growth itself in its own mind.
Everyone has a mind that can grow.
Look at Beethoven. From the time he completed the Fifth Symphony, at age 37, Beethoven grew immensely in his mind to the peaks of the 9th Symphony, the late string quartets, the Hammerklavier Sonata, and the entire late period.
The mind always has a capacity to grow.
A child also has a body, including a brain, with immense capacity for growth.
That is something special.
But remember, the mind always has a capacity to grow.
Our body may grow out of this capacity and reach its limits.
But the mind always has a capacity to grow.
As long as the brain is still functioning well and does not hold it back too much.
We can still grow, as much as any child, in our mind.
Just look at Beethoven.
God loves you! Never stop growing in your mind!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson