The Simple Art of Feeding Your Childishness
An episode today, in the supermarket made me sad
How many times did you assist parents yelling at their kids, telling them life is hard? Of course, I’m not going to give you that chocolate bar!
It’s ok to say no to your kids. But you don’t have to kill their dreams and hopes just because they want something full of sugar from the grocery store.
It’s perfectly normal young children wanting everything they put their eyes on. Yet, it’s not ok for you to be a complete moron.
Young children don’t know life is hard. When you were a kid, you didn’t know either. The problem is that you forgot how it is.
Have you forgotten how beautiful it is to be free from mortgage bills, horrible bosses, or ex-clown-husbands? Kids are free from everything. That’s what childhood is, or it should be.
Last week I was in a supermarket and saw a mother completely out of her mind. She screamed horrible things to her young daughter. Everybody was in shock until a man approached and threatened to call the police.
Meanwhile, the person in charge of the commercial space approached the child and tried to calm her down. As for the mother, she literally turned her back on her daughter and continued shopping as if nothing was happening.
I don’t want to be disrespectful to that mother. We don’t know if this woman suffers from any kind of abuse or domestic violence.
Any kind of public judgment may be unfair. But it hurts our hearts to see an adult saying such barbarities. Especially with a clear intention of destroying what is most valuable in a young kid.
Her innocence.
It’s Innocence When It Charms Us, Ignorance When It Doesn’t
It should be mandatory by law for all adults to be forced to recover their childhood memory. Adults would be sent to a silent place to work on his/her memory.
For a matter of national security, the law would say:
People who don’t remember their childhood are dangerous to society.
I am suspicious that many would have hard times dealing with their own silence. What would they find when they start listening to themselves? Some wouldn’t hear anything. And that would be frightening.
How is it possible to confront so many adults who have already lost the child that existed within them? Not even a piece of childhood remains behind those pair of eyes. I am sad when I meet adults who have already lost their childishness.
Childishness takes us, adults, to the innocence era. Unfortunately, only an exclusive group of adults manages to cultivate it.
The innocence and the beautiful have no enemy but time.- William Butler Yeats
How many times you heard: Please, don’t act like a child!
Why? Why shouldn’t we act like a child? Being adult sucks, so why can’t we explore our childishness the best way we can.
I do it all the time with my daughters. We laugh like there was no tomorrow. It’s probably the best feeling in the world. Being with the most important people. Remembering the silly things you did when you were just an adult’s project.
Doing the mental exercise of remembering all the dangerous and courageous things we did when we had 8 years old is transcendental.
Yet, I find myself talking to friends on so many occasions, remembering the crazy things I did when I was young. And on the other side, I hear- man, I didn’t even remember we did that.
Usually, adults don’t remember their childhood. And that’s sad. Very sad.
Remembering a trip to the Swiss Alps to go skiing, but don’t remember those bicycle journeys outside our hometown?
Don’t remember those crazy bicycle rides without our parents’ permission to go swim in the nearby river? That’s sad.
Not remembering all the forbidden things we did on our parents’ backs is not recognizing the meaning of real adventure.
The same feeling that made us fall in love. The same feeling that made us achieve so many intangible goals.
The funny thing is that we adults create dozens of tools to self-improve. We take courses. We go to therapists. We buy tickets to listen to a Tony Robbins' live session. But we forget that our inside sparkle remains hidden in our own memory.
The sparkle that feeds us for long and fabulous years through our youth is now closed. Or lost inside our minds because we forgot our childishness.
You know that place between sleep and awake where you’re always dreaming? There’s where I’ll always love you. There’s where I’ll be waiting.- Peter Pan
An Odd to All Adults Who Stubbornly Remember Their Childishness
For better or worse, I proudly belong to that local club that feeds childishness.
I always go back in time. I literally went into the Delorian from Back to the Future, type a random date from 1984, and there I go.
I suggest you dare to do it too.
Don’t be afraid. It’s awesome. It’s a sign of freedom. Free yourself from your adultishness. Even if it’s just for a few seconds or minutes.
Those minutes could be the first moments of real freedom. Have you ever imagined being able to free yourself from that burden?
Free yourself from the enormous weight of being an adult?
Childishness is the ultimate antidote to human stupidity.
Free yourself.
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