1 Corinthians 13:11 Meaning When I Was a Child

The child here is the person who still believes the outer world causes his life, who reacts to circumstances as though they were the source of his fortune. He speaks, understands and thinks that way because he has not yet found the creative power in himself. To become a man is to wake to that power, to know that imagination is the one cause and that every condition began as an inner assumption.

The childish things put away are the old excuses: blame, chance, and waiting on the world to change first. What remains when everything else is outgrown is love, and love is the awareness that others are yourself, that the state you grant them you are granting to your own being. All cleverness and worldly knowing pass. The one thing that endures is the imagining, loving power a person turns out to be.

Bāla: The childish one In Pali one word covers both the small child and the grown fool, and that double meaning is the hinge here. Speaking, understanding, and thinking "as a child" means running on appetite, reaching for the bright toy without weighing what it costs. A body can age for decades and still talk in that same small voice, so this growing-up happens in the mind, and the calendar alone never brings it.

Bhāvanā: Cultivation The word means to grow something, the way a gardener raises a plant by tending it daily. "Becoming a man" reads like a single event, yet underneath it lies slow tending: the mind watered and weeded until childish speech and thought give way to steadier ones. No one wakes up ripe overnight, just as no seed becomes a tree in a single morning.

Anupubbasikkhā: Gradual training Growth here arrives step by step, never in a single leap. Speaking, understanding, and thinking come in that order, each stage resting on the one before it. Like a beach that slopes gently into deep water instead of dropping off a cliff, a person matures by degrees, and the child becomes the man without ever noticing the exact hour.

Paṇḍita: The wise one This is the mind that has ripened, the counterpart to the childish one and the aim of all that tending. "When I became a man" marks the turn where understanding carries weight, where words are chosen and consequences seen before acting. Picture the difference between a child scattering coins and an adult who counts them: the same hands, steadier judgment. The grown one does not scorn the child he was; he simply sees further.

Paṭinissagga: Letting go Here is the deliberate setting down of what no longer serves, the plain sense of "put away childish things." Growing up asks you to open the hand that clutched the old toys and tantrums, letting them drop so the fingers come free. The child is outgrown the moment its treasures stop looking like treasure and you walk on without them. Nothing is thrown away in anger; the grip just quietly opens.