A-Z of Soft Skills: I is for Innocence

Picture Credit: PositiveMD

Innocence is freedom from sin. It isn’t about not doing wrong. It is about being guiltless and guileless. It is about being conceptually unaware of the very idea of sin or evil.

The state of innocence is thus generally pitched as the opposite of experience. Childhood is innocence and growing up, or experience, robs us of our innocence.

Why do I feel innocence is a desirable soft skill?

Innocence helps us take the world at face value without expectation of returns. It keeps us full of hope and happiness. It makes us trust.

Innocence helps us make our decisions with a clean slate. It helps us disregard knowledge that says we can’t when we feel we can.

Every story is a new story, even if it is the same story being retold. Every ending is a surprise ending, even if it is predictable. In innocence, we live in the here and now. Nothing else exists.

Innocence helps us react spontaneously and openly to ideas and proposals without stereotypical bias or sub-text that stains them as we compare them to our personal experiential context.

Innocence helps us be ourselves without deceit and makes us do and say things we want to with full-hearted abandon.

I think that if we should definitely and determinedly protect and retain our innocence. Those of us who succeed can make our adult worlds and lives work in the image of our child-like selves: full of fun and happy surprises and wonderment.

The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee consults under the brand Expressions@Work to create and deliver learning and development programs in communication and soft skills.