Is Self-awareness the Same as Awareness of Self?

I went trick-or-treating yesterday with the kids and the neighbours. I haven’t been since I was a kid, so it was a real change of scenery. Not that there have been that many changes- reusable bags or buckets instead of pillowcases to collect everything, but other than that Halloween was pretty much the same.

It was raining, and dim, and kids in costumes ran up down and the sidewalks, from wee ones to older ones, marshmallows, to unicorns, to superheroes; music and decorations were punctured by laughter and tears as everyone moved from door to door to door.

The evening was wrapping up and one of the neighbours was headed back with her five-year-old son, “He’s done,” she said, “He’s over it. Said he has enough candy. Such good self-awareness.”

It struck me as a thought, that a five-year-old could be self-aware, but in reflection, I suppose they probably are. After all, nowadays we know to teach kids to be self-aware, with phrases like ‘listen to your body’ and ‘did that fill her cup?’ mainstream now in the socioemotional literature of education and the home, and how cool is that? That a child would say ‘enough’ to candy on the way night of the year when indulgence was rewarded.

Well, depending on your household, one of the only nights of the year, but it also struck me as a privileged thought. 

After all, I work in education and 20% of our kids are food insecure. 

20%.

That’s 16,000 kids that come to school every day in need of a meal. 

We had one family that showed up, refugees, didn’t know when they were going to eat again. It took the kids a month to realize they didn’t need to stash toast away in their bags; that food would be there for them when they came back the next day. 

What’s wrong with this picture?

And more importantly, what will become of these kids as they grow up? Will those like my neighbour’s child, growing up with privilege, take it for granted that advantage was a part of his system? Would he, like Dostoevsky become burdened by the consciousness of seeing too much or would he be ignorant to it; not see to work towards equity’s cause?

Would these kids learning to regulate their systems grow up to be empowered by their humble beginnings, or would they grow up entrenched in the hate that no one took care of them; that the world still worked this way?

That’s really not for me to say.

And so, if that’s all we know. All we know is that kids grow up, and we, as adults, must be conscious of our own lives and what they are inheriting from us. The what we are doing, the where we must go, as Doctor Seuss once wrote, our feet will follow us wherever we go, and the Buddha wrote, the foot feels the foot when it hits the ground.

The picture changes when we flip it upside down.