Innocence

What can stay to be innocent while also being full of experience? Could human life unfold that way? May I choose to live that way?

The world keeps resisting – insisting that I learn its ways. Can learning not happen without practicing? Can I not learn hatred without hating; learn envy without envying?

I want to go back to the beginning. To when my body felt joy for the very first time. How confused must I have been. How warm. When did it become a habit?

I want to go back to the beginning. To when meaning was meaningless, and purpose was a non-idea. I was still alive, completely empty of expectations. And then life filled the rooms of my body.

Innocence. Ignorance. Choice, and a blessing. I choose, every day, to remain soft when the world keeps urging me turn into stone.