5 Powerful Qualities of a Child That Are Worth Embracing

Keep your inner child alive

“Why?”, he asks with the triangle of a watermelon slice sitting snugly in the ‘o’ of his mouth. “What do you mean why? I am tired of your whys”, I say exasperatedly.

His soft brown eyes flash a blank look. “Ok fine”, I take a deep breath and continue.

“See, it’s simple. Given an address, how do you reach the destination? You first lookup the region, then the layout or colony, then the street, then the building, and then the house number, right?”

As he nods furiously, I continue, “So it’s easy. Say instead, the entire city had only buildings with numbers and no named streets, colonies, and areas. It would be super hard to find your way. The internet is similar to this.”

“Oh yes, it makes sense now”, he says suddenly brightening up. Then, throwing the green rind in the dustbin and wiping the dripping red around his mouth with his shirt sleeve, he tumbles away, on his 8-year-old legs.

“Ah, childhood! The license to do dumb shit, get away with anything and, dream whatever you want.”

I let out a deep sigh, of both relief and satisfaction. The kid was smart but explaining things to him was a pain. Well, explaining things to any kid was a pain, their whys and hows never seemed to end.

I chuckle as I remember how my young self was also quite accomplished when it came to irritating adults.

“I was an inquisitive kid myself until I was taught to shut the f*ck up in school.”

Ah, childhood! — the license to do dumb shit, get away with anything and, dream whatever you want. “He’s just an innocent child!”, everyone says as if any child was not innocent.

Now, I’m all grown up. And well, what is growing up but the child dying and its corpse that we fondly call an “adult” taking its place.

When the child dies so do its qualities but most of these qualities are worth digging up from their graves and embracing.

“Well, what is growing up but the child dying and its corpse that we fondly call an “adult” taking its place.”

Shoot “Whys”

My rather adventurous pursuit of trying to explain how the internet worked to my little cousin turned into an obstacle race, with every why harder to clear than the one before.

I was an inquisitive kid myself until I was taught to shut the f*ck up in school. Believe, accept, ask no questions. It was part of “growing up” they said. Hey, adults didn’t ask stupid questions did they?

But it’s precisely by asking questions and being inquisitive that we learn but no — we would rather stay ignorant than admit ignorance and learn.

Be inquisitive. Irrespective of how stupid a question or doubt may seem to you, shoot it. There’s nothing wrong with being wrong, only with staying wrong.

“We would rather stay ignorant than admit ignorance and learn.”

Believe something only because you know it is true and not because someone said it was. Believe only reason. To quote Ayn Rand,

“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons — a process of thought.

From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man — the function of his reasoning mind.”

You are born with your mind, you die with your mind. You are your mind.

Befriend Goblins

As a preschooler, my mom would read to me every night and I would doze off lost in my imagination of glistening treasures, thieving goblins, talking animals, etc.

It wasn’t dreaming but it was actually traveling to another world. That’s the beauty of being a kid — imagination is boundless and nothing seems impossible. We then grow up and reality smacks us in the face.

We lose our ability to dream. We are now “too old” to read fantasy fiction, watch superhero movies, and read comics.

But imagination is what runs the world — things like time travel, becoming immortal, creating sentient life, etc. seem impossible now but so did airplanes, the internet, and smartphones not so long ago.

Almost everything that exists today once existed only in someone’s imagination.

Realism is good but not at the cost of curbing your imagination. In fact, research shows that the power of imagination is real. So dare to dream freely and let loose your imagination. As Napolean Hill says,

“Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

Rip Off the Mask

“How’s the halva”, my mom asks to which I reply, “It’s okay” as I struggle to down the first spoon while my cousin says, “It’s bland and sticky” with a disgusted face.

My mom’s visibly embarrassed while I smile with a mix of amusement and shock. Kids can be so blunt. Not blunt but rather innocent. It’s natural as kids don’t know how not to be innocent.

But when we grow up, we send genuineness to the gallows and put on a mask that only grows thicker with time. I had one for a long time, an extremely thick one that made me do, say and be things I didn’t want to.

Taking it off was one of the hardest things I had to do. And one of the best things I did.

Genuineness is the most underrated quality a human being can possess. Research shows that authentic people are happier and much more likable. Also, due to the authenticity-to-power effect, the more authentic you are, the more powerful you will feel and even seem to others.

In a world where almost everyone knows that almost everyone fakes, being real shines like a beacon.

Cry One Moment and Run-Off to Play the Next

“Please lemme play”, “No, I need my phone right now. I’ll give you later.”, “No, I want to play now.”, “Be off with you, don’t trouble me.” And he starts wailing. My mom gives me that stare before trying to soothe him.

Midway, he spots the football lying in the corner, cheers up, and goes off with it. Nothing ever seems to bother kids. If only life were that simple.

But it actually is. It’s us that choose to dwell on every single thing, be it small or big.

It took me a heartbreak that flung me into depression, insomnia that left me on the brink of sanity, and a mistake whose regret ate away at my innards to realize the astounding power of acceptance.

In his book Out Of The Darkness, psychologist Steve Taylor featured people that drastically changed in a positive manner after experiencing extreme trauma and suffering. And he says that the common factor among all of them was acceptance. To quote him,

“They ‘let go’, or surrendered to their state. In some cases, they felt they had no choice but to accept their state because they had nothing left to cling to or to hope for. This didn’t mean that they stopped trying to get better, or to rebuild their lives. It just meant that they faced up to the full reality of their state, and stopped trying to resist it in a rigid, adversarial way.”

The power of acceptance is real. Life strikes us all down. It’s how quickly we get back on our feet that makes all the difference.

In any situation in life, there are only two options — change the situation and if you can’t change it, accept it. It’s black or white, the grey of complaining, lamenting, and wallowing in self-pity won’t help.

“Life strikes us all down. It’s how quickly we get back on our feet that makes all the difference.”

Keep It Stupidly Simple

As I am wrestling with the screwdriver, trying to position it in between the wall and a screw, my little cousin walks up to me and enquires what the problem is.

After I explain, with barely a second of pause, he says, “You could just turn the washing machine around right.” “Oh damn! Why didn’t I think of that? Dumb me.”, I say with stupefaction and embarrassment.

I was so focused on trying to find the perfect angle and orientation for the screwdriver that I overlooked the fact that all I had to do was turn the machine around.

Overthinking — it’s one of the traits we acquire growing up along with adopting a “simple-phobic” behavior. We wrestle our arm from behind our head trying to eat instead of doing it directly from the front.

Overthinking has also been linked to psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, and deteriorating mental health over time.

But kids have a penchant for finding the simplest way. The reason is simple — they neither have enough knowledge nor have strong enough cognitive biases to “cloud” their thinking. It’s thinking as pure as it gets.

“We wrestle our arm from behind our head trying to eat instead of doing it directly from the front.”

The best solution is most often the simplest one too. This is exactly what the ancient principle Occam's razor also says.

All it takes is taking a step back and looking at it from a child’s perspective or in other words — stripping away your cognitive biases, preconceived notions, and thinking in a simple objective manner.

The Takeaway

Going from childhood to adulthood doesn’t mean that you have to kill the child within you. As adults, there’s much in a child that is worth embracing.

• Inquisitiveness. Be hungry to learn. Don’t hesitate to ask questions, no matter how stupid they might seem to you. Trust reason and accept something as true only because you understand it is and not because someone said so.
• Imagination. Dare to dream freely. Nothing is in the realm of impossible. Let loose your imagination. The next great idea might be just around the corner.
• Genuineness. Be real, be authentic, be yourself. It will go a long way in strengthening your relationships and greatly improving your life.
• Resilience. The downs are as much part of life as the ups. When life strikes you down, get back up as quickly as possible instead of staying down and wallowing in self-pity.
• Objective and simple thinking. Be mindful and critical when thinking. Try not to let your cognitive biases, beliefs, opinions, etc. interfere. Also when faced with multiple solutions, pick the simplest one.

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