Through a Child's Eyes

"Walk with me, child," the old man said as he placed his arm around the young boy's shoulders. The old man was fairly tall, and showed it even more next to the short youth who was at most twelve years old. They were both dressed in overalls, but the old man wore a red and brown plaid shirt while the young boy had on a plain white t-shirt. Their boots were dirty as they walked through the wet grass and scattered clumps of mud.
"Boy," the old man said as he looked down at the youth, "your generation is lost in this world. They do not see what is around them, the beauty, the peace, the harmony that the land, the life, the people can show, and I fear that you too are gonna fade in their blind ways."
"Why do you fear that, sir?" the young boy said as he kicked a small rock on the ground. The rock bounced over the grass before it landed in a small puddle.
"In my day people had more respect and understanding of what was around them, but youth today is quite foolish," the old man answered with a bit of a sigh.
"Oh, sir," the boy began as he stood up the tallest he could, with a little pride. "That is not so. I can see everything around me. I can see the beauty that a flower has in the morning after a soft rain, and I can see the peace in a mother deer as she runs across the forest path with her small baby in the pale light of the moon, and I can see the harmony in the way the winds blow the leaves off the trees and settle them upon the path we walk on."
The old man was shocked at first. He didn't expect such an answer from such a young boy. "These days, man is concerned with himself and himself alone. With politics, and economics, and all that foolish talk of fame and fortune. People don't see what my generation used to see." He paused for a second. "Tell me boy, what can you see about the people?" the old man asked as his pace slowed down.
The little boy grew quiet, thinking hard, before he finally came up with a response. "I see the pain of the people in your old eyes," the boy said as he looked up at the elder man. The man held him tighter as they walked across the meadow.