When I grow up?

What did you or do you say when people ask what you want to be when you grow up? From lots of kids I've heard answers like a firefighter, astronaut, or super hero. Very few people ever end up with the job they claimed to want as young children. When asked, I never really knew what to say. I know the point of the question is to make you think about what kind of career you will end up with, but to me, the question always just seemed so limiting.

I wanted to do everything. I wanted more time to decide. I wanted to be a child for decades so I could try a little bit of a lot of different things and not really be pushed into any one particular thing. Eventually I settled on the answer of by the time I grow up, I intend to be old, if I in fact ever grow up at all.

Kids have this sense of wonder and awe at the newness of everything. Nearly every minute that they are not being hit with some negative stimulus, they are happy. It is something that most adults lose and with it a lot of the light in their life goes away. We tend to get jaded and bitter and cynical about life and all of it's little details. Our interest in learning new things goes out the window. Once that happens we tend  to grow old and die.

Many of the oldest people in the world have attributed their long lives to being happy people. If that is true, if happiness is the key to a long life then we should do our best to keep that childlike sense of wonder alive, or to rekindle it if it has been lost.

But how would one go about doing that? One way would be to spend as much time as possible around young children. Kids in the two to seven year old range have generally not been subjected to the fears and prejudices of their parents for long enough to tarnish their natural unconditional love of nearly everyone and everything.

I know from personal experience with my son that spending just a few minutes in his presence is enough to brighten my whole day. Seeing life through his eyes, observing how he takes in new data,  how he rushes headlong with total enthusiasm into everything he chooses to do and seeing him so open and willing to share warms my heart,makes me smile and occasionally even brings out some tears of joy. It is such a beautiful thing.

Another way would be to remember being a young child. The person that you were when you believed in Santa and the Tooth Fairy and a world filled with magick is still there inside of you It never really goes away. It just gets pushed back and shoved down. In reality, adults are just taller children playing at being older people and handling responsibilities.

But if you decide to find or build a loving supportive environment where you can safely let your safeguards and walls down, you can learn to get back in touch with that inner child, the person that you really are. You can take back your happiness. And if you really want to be, you can be that person nearly all the time. We put up the walls as an automatic measure to keep us safe. With the wisdom of age, comes the experience to be open and loving with most people and put the walls back up briefly when you need to.

You can turn plain old everyday boring life in to a super awesome unbelievably fun adventure with no ordinary moments, just by shifting your perspective. In reality that is all that ever really changes. No one ever really grows up, they just find different ways of dealing with obstacles. Some people choose to become more stuffy and boring and some people choose not to.

I changed my mind. I am never growing up.