The Adults of the World are charged with the responsibility of protecting, nurturing, and loving the 2.2 billion souls among us who are children – Our Children – the Next Generation of Leaders, Husbands, Fathers, Wives, and Mothers.  We invest energy and time into teaching Our Children powerful life lessons. Our Children instinctively know that Life is magical and full of possibilities. In their world, obstacles do not exist. They have an uncanny way of transforming the most mundane activity into an adventure.

As a general rule, there is nothing eventful about food shopping. And that is the mindset I had when, some weeks ago, I embarked upon my weekend pilgrimage to the grocery store. The Universe thought otherwise, It arranged for me to cross paths with an extremely articulate, brilliant and bright-eyed four year old boy who would give me quite a lot to think about. The young lad was accompanied by a woman — his grandmother — who struck up a conversation with me as we waited in a very long line to pay for our groceries.

“ . . . The village is gone in our communities. When you see children misbehaving, you cannot say anything to them because you are afraid that their parents will confront you. And children as young as seven and eight years old are out in the streets all hours of the night. I see them walking around at night – playing in the street,” she lamented.

“Where are their parents?” I asked as she gave me an “Excuse-me-are-you-serious?!” look.

Now, I am not naïve. I have some idea about what is going on with their parents. But what I thought was not important here. I wanted to see things through her eyes.

 “It’s babies having babies out here. The parents are young and they let the children do what they want,” she explained.

“Where are the grandparents?”

“Grandparents?! Huh?! You can’t tell these parents today how to raise their children. And that is why everything is out of control. It’s going to get worse. All you can do is pray. Well, we have an election coming up in a few days. Maybe we can get folks into office who can do something about this. What do you think?”

 “Change comes from the bottom up – at the grassroots level. The community will have to decide how it will solve its problems,”  I responded.

“This is my grandchild and his mother is very strict with him,” she said as she held the precocious four year old close to her.

He glanced up at me as he engaged his grandmother in a conversation. The young lad was trying to persuade his grandmother to purchase a small toy he found in one of the aisles. She reminded him that he had more than enough toys at home and instructed him to return the toy to its location. Before following her instruction, he responded by demurely telling her: “But I need this.”

I was struck by his advanced level of articulation. Most children who attempt to persuade an adult to acquiesce to their request, talk about what they “want”. The conversation is always about what they “want”. This young lad’s conversation was not about his “wants”, but about his “needs”  — a conversation that immediately captured  my attention. As I looked at him, I silently mused: “I ‘need’? Now, where is that coming from? What four year old child says, I ‘need’? ”

“Your grandson is very articulate and very bright. How old is he?” 

“Thank you. Yes, he is very smart. He is four years old and I am trying to get him into preschool. He reads a lot. He loves reading books.”

And then glancing at me for a fleeting moment, the young lad repeatedly exclaimed half playfully and half seriously, as he raised both of his arms high in the air above his head: “Are you ready for me world?” 

“Oh, that’s just something he heard on television,” his grandmother explained to me.

As the four year old’s Grandmother and I ended our conversation, I silently wondered: “Who is this child? What does he intuitively know about himself . . . the reason he is here on Planet Earth . . . his gifts and talents? Am I looking at a soul who is destined to have a positive and dramatic impact on the world when he matures into an adult?” 

Are all four year old little boys who exist in every corner of our global village asking: “Are you ready for me world?” For example, did this question occupy the mind of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and South African President the late Honorable Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela — whose middle name “Rolihlahla” is a Xhosa name which means “pulling the branch of a tree”, but colloquially means “trouble maker” – when he was four years old? Did Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh, global spiritual leader, author, and founder of The Plum Village Tradition (https://plumvillage.org); the late Muhammad Ali, the late Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, lawyer, politician, social activist, and leader of the Nationalist Movement against British Rule of India;  the late Steve Jobs, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple;  and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and American Civil Rights Leader the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — silently or aloud – at the age of four: “Are you ready for me world?”

Is our world – in its present condition – ready for articulate, precocious, and bright four year old little boys who represent the Next Generation of Leaders, Husbands, and Fathers? These souls are looking at our world through the expansive lens of hopefulness and endless possibilities. They enthusiastically ask, “What if? Why not?” Can you imagine the powerfully positive impact these souls who are armed with a dynamic and fearless “What-if-why-not-are-you-ready-for-me-world” mindset will potentially have on a world that seems to operate from an “upside down” position?

Sears is the Editor/Author of a book on  Fatherhood and Men’s  Issues – IN SEARCH OF FATHERHOOD® — TRANSCENDING BOUNDARIES; the Managing Editor of a quarterly international male parenting journal —IN SEARCH OF FATHERHOOD® — which moderates a Global Dialogue on Fatherhood and is distributed in Australia, Italy, Trinidad and Tobago, Norway, South Africa, Ghana, Canada, Botswana, Jamaica, and the United States; and the creator and moderator of IN SEARCH OF FATHERHOOD®’s blog.  The concept for IN SEARCH OF FATHERHOOD® was created by Sears’ mentor, the late L.T. Henry, a classically trained jazz musician who briefly performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and was a former drummer for internationally acclaimed songstress and film and television actress Ms. Della Reese; author; photojournalist; and sales and success motivation trainer who died in March 1999.   Ms. Sears’ work on Fatherhood and Men’s Issues which began in 1999, has helped to perpetuate her late mentor’s legacy and resurrect his vision for an interactive Fatherhood Forum.