"If you dream of dolphins it is a good dream" my eight year old friend tells me "but if you dream of sharks then it is a nightmare." She tells me that both, dolphin and shark live in the water and that from the outside, one never knows whom is he going to encounter.

"I see", I tell her, trying to understand what is she is telling me.

My friend is one of many little friends with whom I work with. Little guys who have a particularly challenging life, for all of them, from an early age, are faced with the torments of abuse, poverty, or insensitivity.

"My father is like a dolphin" my little friend tells me, and then adds looking away "but sometimes he is like a shark."

"And what about me?" I ask. The little girl smiles, "You are always a dolphin!"

And we go on talking for a while, dolphins and sharks helping us uncover the language of the heart. Feelings are highly symbolic and every child has his own language.

My little friend has helpers, people who are tutors in reading, writing, and computers. So, I am fortunate to play the simple role of friend. While others help her to learn from the world, I learn from her.

Many children come to my office with a heavy heart. I try to give them their childhood back. Beyond their wounds, there is a center of life, bright and undisturbed. Some have moved far from it, quickly adopting mannerisms and attitudes of the adults around them. Yet, their center is there, like the sun behind some clouds.

If I can keep this inner-sun in mind, I connect with their essence, and I feel goodness radiating from me, what Native American Indians call "Good Medicine."

One of the tragedies of children is that adults seem to think that these creatures are going to be someone in the future, without realizing that they are someone today. The person that they are, they are more so at childhood than at any other stage of their life. There is great creativity in them. I can sit with them, and with a little bit of encouragement, they can come up with a song, or a poem, or a story. The artist that we all are is alive in them, just waiting for the opportunity to come out and play.

I have come to realize that it takes great courage to be a child. Courage because one has to be fully alive. Courage because one has to live with intensity in the present moment. Courage, because one has to be spontaneous and genuine.

A while back, one of my little friends came into my office, and at his five years, went right to the point. He asked me "Am I going to die?" He was going through some intense chemotherapy for cancer, and his prognosis was not favorable. "We are all going to die" I responded "But we are alive right now." The little guy nodded and then shared with me that his mother, who had left him with his grandmother while she explored a life in a big City, was coming back to be with him. He was nervous about this whole deal. But the fear subsided once he spent some time with his mother. The love of four years of distance had been stored in his mother’s heart, and now it was pouring on him.

"My mother loves me!" the little guy told me, and I had never before seen him so satisfied with his life. That was the last time I saw him, just a few days before he died.

And I miss the little guy. I miss all of the little ones that have passed on, even when they get big, for when you know someone from their childhood; a part of them will always remain a child within you.

Love makes us vulnerable. The more we expand our circle of love, the more we expose ourselves to pain. The Toltecs called the heart of their greatest healers "hearts with thorns" for their circle of love surrounded the whole world in all of its pain and suffering. Our tendency is to close our heart after a tragedy, to hold back life once death has entered our circle. We do not want to expose ourselves to such suffering, and we withhold our love from the world. Then death has victory over us, for then we live little because we love little.

As I mourn the death of one of my little friends, I feel the thorns in my heart. Images of his face go through my mind, and the thorns go in, deeper. I am tempted to harden my heart, to block the pain, but I don’t. I stay with it. Then I notice that there is something in there, more than just the pain. There is a connection to my friend, a life that flows from his life to mine. I move him into my circle of love, right into the center. Then I know that he goes on living, in my heart, in eternity.