The things we used to treasure.

Remember the complexity of our life as children.  We were sheltered from the worst of things.  Those things were in the hushed voices of our elders. We knew the voice but not what it meant.  But our life wasn't simple.  No quite the opposite.  Beautiful in fact, because most of it wasn't real.  Or at least mine wasn't. We weren't able to see the reality that we faced each day.  We didn't see that the man on the streets that looked dirty didn't actually have a bed to get into, or someone to feed him when he is hungry.  How would we have responded to that man?  We want to help.  But we also didn't know that that man may be dangerous, a sick man that shouldn't be around a little girl. We didn't realize the way he got to the street corner, because we didn't realize that our decisions define us.  That our parents had to protect us from that man, from the reality of the circumstance.  Our parents understand that their decisions affect their children's life.  In childhood our decisions are a trial run.  The question is do we make less effecting decisions because we don't understand reality, or because we haven't been corrupted by it?
There are so many things that I wish my eyes haven't seen, my hands haven't done, my mouth hasn't said, and my mind hasn't thought. I didn't have this guilt as a child.  Maybe my mind didn't have the capability to register a memory such as guilt, but in even in recollection of my memory I don't feel the guilt.  From what point to we leave innocence?  The kind of innocence that shelters us from the guilt and shame. Where does that come from?
Changes in life aren't abrupt steps. Life is a slow change in color.  Like when an watercolor artist smooths out a color into another. Brilliantly we transition without even knowing we left one color or entered another. Trying to figure out when you entered a new color is about as easy as trying to remember when you entered a dream. It's when we are in the deepest darkest part of the color do we realize we are in a new place.
The fact is we cannot know when we are coming to a new stage, like entering into the shame and guilt we all know so well.  Because we don't understand where we are going. Despite the fact that billions of people have all gone through the exact same disposition as us.  Life is a collection of experience, thoughts, and feelings. We won't ever break any cycle, because we learn in progression.  So maybe it's pointless to ask questions like mine. But to understand the stages of life gives insight into how we used to be, and maybe recreation of the past can occur.  Can we be as happy as we were as children if just could remember how we got there and how we left?  How wonderful life could be if I could still find pleasures in watching my sister play Spyro for hours, or the fascination of watching cookies rise in the oven, or splendid view of a snowflake landing on my tongue.  Can we get that back?