Dann kommt der grosse, graue, Böse Wolf aus dem Wald

There is a day care facility across the street for children of the employees of the hospital there. I can often see the children, who seem to be about 3- to 6-year-olds, shouting, running, playing with swings and small bikes and beach balls. They are obviously full of energy and sheer life, running around there like spring lambs on this early May day.

Those children increasingly break my heart for some reason and I had difficulty when I recently tried to articulate why for a friend.

We all know about and are horrified by the sorrow of children, particularly when it is caused by deliberate malice. Dostoyevsky pays especially memorable attention to it in The Brothers Karamazov. I regularly see it in in department stores and other public places. And it is, of course, in the fairy tales.

But it is the fact that I am more pained by the thought of it than ever that strikes me now. Part of the story of growing older is that you are expected to accept realities but here I am into my seventies and I find myself more horrified than ever by what these children face.

The best I can propose to explain the increasing horror I feel from watching these life-filled children is that I am more truly experienced and aware. The extent and severity and subtlety of how wrong the situation really is have become more and more accessible to me.

But I suppose that redemption, dealing with it, alchemizing it, IS possible even although it seems such an immense task and difficult to accomplish.