How to Go Back to Believing Anything is Possible
“I wanna turn into a rocket ship and touch the moon”
My son shifted his gaze and looked at me questioningly. My first instinct was to reply, “No, you’re a human. You can’t turn into a rocket ship and you can’t touch the moon. We have to eat dinner before it gets cold.”
My second instinct was, “Why the f*ck not?”
There is a limitlessness to the curiosity and imagination of my two-year-old. My son, who is yet to be shaped by the societal constraints which will be imposed on his wild ingenuity, believes that anything is possible. He believes that he can become an airplane. He believes he is a superhero. And he believes that mama can fix anything he breaks.
I know better.
To a child, the simple act of growing up seems to be the panacea for all things they are not yet allowed to do. “When I get to be a big kid, can I… ?” Make an airplane, make things disappear, and yes, go to the moon. You can do all of that when you grow up, dear child.
But when we do grow up, the sad irony is, we look back to realize that we’ve lost the very thing we need to accomplish all of these. The key to unlocking our potential, our limitless curiosity, has been carelessly dropped somewhere in the past as we sprinted toward adulthood.
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” -Pablo Picasso
At some point, someone — a parent, a teacher, a friend — tells us what is not possible in our lives, and…we believe them. We learn how rocketships are made, we calculate how much it costs to go to the moon, and we root ourselves in practicality and conformity.
The hard scientifically proven fact is we become less and less creative as we age. Psychologists at UC Berkeley found that “adults resorted to less creative thought processes than children.”
Most adults do not think they can be superheroes and most kids don’t know there even exists a box within which to think. The slow, tragic demise of wonder over time seems to be largely inevitable. However, I personally am determined to not only stop it in its tracks but to push it backward.
How do we adults backtrack to the creative genius of a preschooler? First of all, it’s not easy. Second, nonconformity is not always met with acceptance from others.
If you’re brave enough to take the plunge (or to blast off), here are two ways to open your mind to the non-obvious and regain some of the inventiveness of a young person.
Chuck Your Assumptions
If adults look at a closed spiral notebook, they assume it is full of paper, potentially with lines on each page, and that it is meant to be filled with written words. Kids make no such assumption. A child, when given a notebook, will test all of their hypotheses in relation to it. Does it bend? Does it make music? Can it float? Does it stand on its side?
While testing some of these hypotheses could lead to a ruined notebook, there is a little piece of wisdom here. For those of us who have been on this planet for longer, we make a lot of assumptions about things that may be limiting the possibilities that we have at our disposal. Maybe, just maybe, that notebook can stand on its side and it can make a pretty awesome guard rail for a matchbox car racing track.
Weizmann Institute scientist David Fortus says, “Making assumptions is an important step in solving many real-world problems.” Unfortunately, though, our assumptions also limit us in so many ways. We assume that we will be turned down for a promotion. We assume that we are not experienced enough. We assume something isn’t possible.
Children, however, don’t make these assumptions. They don’t know enough yet. I challenge you, in spite of what you think you know, to have the courage to kick your assumptions to the curb and reexamine life with fresh eyes and an open heart.
Run — Don’t Walk
When I open the front door, my son bolts out into the sunshine like a catapult launch roller coaster. He runs everywhere because he (understandably) sees no reason to walk when he could reach his destination more quickly. And guess what? He falls down a lot.
As adults, we often champion the tortoise. “Slow and steady wins the race.” I have a new idea to consider — slow and steady sometimes dies before it reaches the finish line. And we all know that we learn from failure, so why the heck would we not run, fall down, learn, and enthusiastically get back up and keep running?
Time is the only thing we can’t get back. As adults, we often see something we want and stand motionless rather than running to get it. Grownups want to write a book, they want to visit a faraway country, they want to learn a new language, or they want to simply say something important to another person.
For one reason or another, we find a reason to stand in place, gaze at something we want, and put off going to get it. This is not what children do. Try putting out a tray of candy at a three-year-old’s birthday party. No kid looks at the candy and thinks, I want that candy but I don’t deserve to eat it yet. I’ll wait for a better time. Kids know that there is no guarantee that it will be there when they’re finally ready to go get it.
The Takeaway
Childhood is erratic, exhausting, and messy. Kids break things, they fall down, and they feel emotions very deeply — the good and the bad. As adults, we work so hard to eliminate the mess and to protect ourselves from falling down. When we do that, though, we lose the magical belief that anything is possible.
We admire the sense of wonder that is evident in the innovators of our world, but we cling to our assumptions and tiptoe carefully through life so as not to hurt ourselves.
Friends, let’s all become rocket ships and go touch the moon. And even if we don’t get there, let’s dance on the stars along the way.