Children I find are so deeply in tune with their existential layer that often they can articulate an existential dynamic within themselves effortlessly.
The following is a follow-up of the post on Existential Hatred. See there.
Was staying at a family recently for shabbos. At some point during, one of the daughters (probably around 6 or 7 years old I'd say) was taking a liking to me and initiated holding my hand or sitting on my lap. I neither encouraged nor discouraged the behavior (although admittedly it was nice to feel some closeness to someone after such long times of being alone).
In any event, it was a matter of time before she came and jumped on my lap in front of her mother. Her mother quickly intervened gently in the affair and told her daughter in a very right-of-fact but gentle manner (and commendably so) that the daughter may only hug and touch her close family relatives. Any boy that was non-family she could talk to freely but she wasn't allowed to hug them or sit on their lap.
"Okay?" she asked her daughter, looking to make sure the ground rules of affection she had just laid out to her daughter were being successfully processed.
To which the daughter, in a flinch of a second, shot back "If I can't touch him then I won't to talk to him at all!"
Existential Separatism. What can you do? :-)
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