When we are younger, we look up to adults, our future, and even what we want to do with our lives (careers, professions). When we are kids, we don’t care about what people think, even if they are looking down on us. When we are kids, we have dreams that we someday would like to accomplish. When we are kids, we look at the little things and think differently about how life equals joy, happiness, sunshine, and rainbows. However, as we grow up, we start to diminish that hope, that passion for life, and that feeling of joy because we feel pressured to grow up because we are convinced that when we are older, life will be better, and we will be able to accomplish all the things we can’t do at the moment. I know it sounds harsh, and I do apologize.
Hence, let me put into context where all of this is coming from. On Friday, April 30, it was International Children’s Day and a friend of mine and I had a community service with an associated school with ours, and we were assigned to be with the kindergarten kids. From the start, we both had a smile from ear to ear because the kids had gotten dressed up and were about to open the presents we had recollected for them, and they seemed so joyful. We had some activities planned for them, and the teachers had warned us that we would only be able to handle thirty minutes, and we ended up being with them for an hour and a half, talking, laughing, and acting like kids. My friend and I decided to play the story of The Little Prince via Youtube with an animated video to entertain the kids. By the end of that story, we asked the kids to tell us what their thoughts were and what they liked and draw it; most of them said the rose, and some said the story itself was beautiful. Then the kids had asked my friend and me, and we both said: We grow up convinced that life will be better, and suddenly time flies, and we still have that same hope that one day we will do something with our life. Sadly, we grow up to be in a systematic society where everything is materialistic, and there is no absolute joy anymore. Being a kid allows us to have the opportunity to live without care and with constant happiness. After we did this activity and finished the community service, I had sent my friend a message telling him that I could not remove my smile because I had realized I stopped being a kid and started to care about the future, about what isn’t essential. Unfortunately, we feel the need to grow up so quickly that we lose the chance to live our childhood and teenage years with joy, trying to rush things. And later that day, I felt the need to laugh, smile, and question if it is necessary to lose that inner child within us. That inner child we have is one of our most authentic versions of ourselves, and why is it that we lose it? Or why is it that we want to lose it? Why do we want to rush things, and why do we want to grow up so quickly even if time flies? Why is it that we can’t be a kid from time to time and find joy in the littlest things when we grow up?
I suggest you allow your inner child to come out from time to time and see life from the innocent eyes of a kid. Allow yourself to see life as joy and not like such a programmed and conditioned place.
Z.
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