When i was a child i thought that growing up means being serious and not being playful anymore. I thought that being mature means feeling self important, established, formal, not laughing out loud, always busy etc. I was so wrong. I thought that childishness and childlikeness are the same. No they are worlds apart. But the damage was already done. I learned to outgrow the most important qualities of being a child. For a while as i was growing up, i stopped being playful. Then i stopped my wondering and inquisitive mind. Then i reduced my giggles and boisterous laughter. Then i forgot to dream and wallow in fantasies as the cold hard world made its presence felt. My heart hardened as i slowly lost my capacity to love without fear of being hurt. Little did i know that i was growing backwards and i was becoming less of the beautiful person that i was and meant to be. Now i know better. Now i need to go back and remember my childhood days when i was young and fresh and carefree. I need to go back to that original vitality and moments of pure freedom and love and caring. I realized that childishness and childlikeness are totally different. The difference is between selfishness and selflessness. The real essence of growing up is not in being less playful and more serious. No. It is about learning to give more of ourselves to others. It is about embracing the world with all the love that we can give despite the pain that may come our way. It’s about sacrifice and compassion. It’s about cherishing life so much that we can lavish others with our selfless giving. It’s about loving ourselves so much that we can love others regardless of being hurt because we can always manage to rise up. The good news is, we can now start to play like children….hahaha…we can be childlike all we want. In fact we need to enhance our wondering mind as the basis of knowing. We need to engage in dreams and fantasies as a basis of creating a new reality and not just accepting the hard touch of reality without ever desiring to change the way things are. More importantly we should not throw laughter out of the window—its the world’s most important quality—to be able to laugh at ourselves silly because all of our most important achievements and thoughts are really nothing in the face of eternity.
