Remember being nine? That slightly awkward age when the innocence of childhood was still tangible, but self-awareness began to take root and becoming a teenager was well within reach.
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It is a fragile time.
In the midst of their own nine-year-old lives, four very courageous children put aside their doubts and had their hair shaved off for another boy who did not have the choice.
Ryan Campbell, Cayden Holder, Nash Cook and Zoe Harmon sat bravely before a large and loud audience of their peers in solidarity with their friend William Marshall, fighting cancer from his hospital bed in Brisbane.
Each lost their locks with determination and seemed rapt they had actually done it and raised so much money in the process.
It is from the selflessness of children that we can learn.
These four little people looked beyond the potential barbs from a classmate who might judge them on their looks after the fact.
They had no agenda other than to aid a friend who was not beside them at recess, foraging for frogs in the tall grass, laughing and running on a footy field or sharing a snack out of his lunch box.
When do we lose that simple altruism for the person in need beside us?
Far beyond the secure realm of Ross Hill School are complicated lives and families rent apart by need within Inverell.
These people come in the form of women and children and men trapped by domestic abuse, young people to much older than the four students hoping for an extra night on the couch with a mate before they are asked to leave.
Our town has elderly who eat, sleep and live in a lounge room, the only space in the house they can afford to heat on these cold Inverell nights.
There is a lot to learn.
It might be interesting to ask Zoe, Ryan, Nash and Cayden what solution they might find for these people who want for a better life.
As adults, we might guess their answer would be simple and the same.
“Help them.”
We can learn from the innocent wisdom of children, but we must also follow their example, and act.