The word, “touch” has become some sort of four letter word in our world today.
“They were touching each other too much.”
“Did he touch you?”
“Don’t touch yourself!”
It has become something so taboo, so twisted from its original, perfect purpose that we have run from the action entirely. In doing so, we have lost an essential physical connection between us. We were created to be touched. To be bounced on a knee, to be held when we’re terrified of the dark, to get raspberries on our tummies. We need a physical relationship when we are younger to be able to develop into strong, self-confident adults. A girl who is deprived of fatherly affection when she is a child will run one of two opposite ways as an adult. Either she will dress provocatively, begging attention from every corner, throwing herself into the arms of any male, willing or otherwise, or she will cower from the male awareness and contact that she never received in her youth. Both of these roads are terrifying the further you travel down them and knowing the world today of prostitutes, strippers, and drug abusers, the end isn’t exactly a fairy tale.
This isn’t to say that anyone who was inappropriately touched as a child will end up as a hooker, and that every good child-raising will turn a girl into a strong, confident woman who knows she doesn’t need to prove herself in any physical way. The ways of the world are hard. It takes one’s own, genuine choice to take what one has been given and help someone else with it.
The world is filled with people who take their influence over others, be it one child or an entire nation, and use it for their own, perverted, twisted, selfish desires. There will always be these sad excuses of a life, but in their wake, we can fight with perfect innocence.
If you have a child or know one, you will have some sort of pull in that child’s life. It’s just the way it is. Let them climb on your back and pretend you’re a horse. Be a surfboard in the pool. Wake your daughter by moving the hair from her face and calling her princess. Make sure your son gets the football so you can pick him up and throw him in the air. Theirs will be a better world because of it.
