Unleash Your Childlikeness

Pen in hand I write my way through hardship, and document joy. I make contact with my childlikeness. I find the purest parts of myself, and I write away my ugly ego when pen kisses paper.

However, once my pen is down and the ink no longer flows it means I have returned to my adult responsibilities. The day fades into an off-putting shade of gray. It has lost its color and I am now slapped with mundane tasks. I walk out into the world of suppressed emotions, and busy schedules where people only know how to operate as human doings. They go to therapy and practice meditation to relearn how to be a human being, one that is allowed to breathe and feel, and take time to rest. Meditation is to practice quieting the mind and for resting. Therapy is for human connection and encouragement. But what happens when the session is over?

We step out into the world of doing and return to our oxygen deprived lives. We lose sleep, and waste energy. We spend money faster than we can make money. But mostly we lose ourselves. Somewhere among all the schedule filling, the money spending, and the shoving aside emotions we lost our childlikeness. We trained ourselves to lose it.

Childlikeness- The place and quality where the soul is ignited, the mind elevated, the heart unafraid to beat, the body simultaneously at peace and fully energized.

Children have bursting personalities and egos that propel them to voice their needs thus causing them to be the center of attention. But they are innocent and only operate the best they know how. However, as they grow they have a profound sense of adventure and a keen emotional intelligence. They have an extensive imagination and deep love of life. The world they know may move fast at times, but it is not without joy and play. This allows their imaginations to flow, their bodies to work as intended, and their hearts to beat in profound gratitude for being. When they need to children take their rest without shame.

Shame is something that gets developed over time. It weakens the heart, it clutters the mind and then it is easily trained into the soul. Once this shame becomes a tangible feeling nothing is ever the same again. Childlikeness is lost. The forever complicating adult world begins.

Adults are forever exhausted as they try to keep up with their lives, their loved ones, the world views, beliefs, keep up with protocol, right vs wrong, their own ideas, and all the while trying to find something that will make themselves feel whole and energized in a world that is so draining. Often what is found is just an escape because it is easier to maintain an escape for a short time than to accomplish a life long dream. An escape allows the adult to take a step towards joy and remember what childlikeness feels like without having to commit to looking foolish, to staying still, or surrendering too much of their ego for too long. Being for an extended period of time would be dangerous.

When I begin a Netflix show I understand the escape, the safe joy of having an escape. It leaves my heart momentarily separate from guilt and my mind at rest. But when I begin to write, to put pen, paper, and idea together I understand the importance of chasing a dream. I touch and tap into my childlikeness. I realize it was never lost, but just needed encouragement. It needed a reason to come out and play. As the ink from my pen flows onto the page I breathe and become a child writing my great adventure story full of love, mystery, joy, and buckets of fun! As I write this story I think and hope to share it with my classmates and watch their faces light up as they listen. Then connection emerges and everyone is brought together in those few minutes of sharing. This is life at its best. The world is in living color and how beautiful it is.

My fellow adults,

To escape is great, but it is not often something we can aspire to and does not inspire long term peace and growth. Find a reason for being. Something that lets you breathe and ignites your childlike essence. Grab hold of a dream and run with it. Unleash your childlikeness. Leave shame in the dust and go play!