In my life, being a child meant playing, imagining, creating... visiting new and exciting places and sometimes being surprised, having extra fun on holidays and getting my favorite food on my birthday, knowing I was safe and cared for and that my needs would be met... and did I mention playing?
Adulthood for me seems exactly the same, but with the neato additions of staying out as late as you want, going on vacations without a chaperone, living where you want, buying alcohol, voting, and ... my fave ... driving!!! You still get to watch cartoons, do kid stuff and even make forts ... whether with your own kids, a relative's or friend's kids, or heck, even on your own! You just have more choices as to the types of fun and play in which you can engage. Woohoooooo!
And you have the opportunity to mature out of shallownewss, pettiness, childish cruelty, adolescent angst, insecurity and the like. In short, to me, adulthood is childhood with benefits.
“I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. ... ... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.”
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| P.S. If anyone needs me today, I'll be with my dog, working & playing in my fort. It's laden with fairy lights & squishy pillows, the kind that are perfect for pillow fights |
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