Life As A Playground, A Child’s View
Yesterday, I found myself in an encaged wire structure a hundred feet off of the ground. Frozen. Humorously paralyzed by the height. My natural instincts rushed over me, should I go back to stable ground or do I continue to the other side?
I find myself in this position often, in everyday life. Stuck in the in-between. My consistently indecisive nature persevering. To fight through the fear and continue on, or to relinquish back to known comfort.
I watch children fearlessly tackle this same obstacle with joy and determination. Here I am, after 21 years of life, struggling to move just one foot from where I’m at. The years and wisdom has now put me at a disadvantage.
It’s interesting how when we’re older, we still need to take time to learn how to live like a child again. How we can let life impose mental limitations that we sometimes forget are there. My mind becomes fixated on the extremely long drop below, and the fact that I could lose everything in my purse any second. Yet, a kid continues to embrace the current moment elevated high up in the air with a glowing smile on their face. I have not dropped my purse, nor fell over a hundred feet to my death. Why do I let worry steal this moment of happiness in my pursuit to crawl through this trapped cage?
It’s an unfortunate concept we lose as we grow up. The ability to fully embrace the present moment. It’s where we find the ultimate joy in our lives, yet we continue to allow a flood of thoughts to steal precious moments away. Over time, we train our mind to be somewhere else, mostly unconsciously. It’s a trap we have come accustomed to.
When we’re older, we must make a conscious effort to embrace the present moment. Mindfully acknowledge and immerse ourselves in it fully. As a child, we had no obligations and little preconditioned thinking. We could embrace the present moment in its entirety.
Yesterday, I felt like a kid again.
It was relatively refreshing compared to the normal day-to-day monotonous tasks. I am always engaged in an online environment or enclosed in a room somewhere. It was liberating to tackle a physical environment, a spacious playground of amusement and fun. Joyful to touch and feel the creations of someone else’s work. Amazing to contemplate the creation of this crazy thing. How it started with an idea, and formed into a huge, creative playground for families. The Saint Louis City Museum allows people to come from a childlike place of being.
I went down a 10-story slide. I went down multiple slides. More than I have in the last 6 years, and it was a blast. As I head closer to graduation, I feel the childlike essence of play slipping from me. In the next 6 months, I will no longer be a student. It feels unbelievable to think that I will lose a title I’ve claimed for the last 16 years. True, independent adulthood awaits me. However, I vow to always be a student of life and a kid at heart. To let life teach me the lessons I’ve been so resistant to learn.
When I’m 30, will I playfully run around a maze of a museum? At 40? 50? I hope to be. I don’t want to let preconditioned thinking hold me from experiencing something like this again. I never want to be “too grown up” to the point where I cannot find myself in a ball pit, fighting for my life against a 7 year old boy. Or that I’m not once again paralyzed in the midst of a colorfully encaged wire structure with a phenomenal view. I want to live life in moments where I find myself 7 years old again. That age is not a rule of when I choose to stop doing playful kid-like activities.
I want to always find myself in moments embracing the kid-like definition of play. Whether that be painting a hideous stick-figured picture, sliding down a 10-story slide, or building something that matters. Living with courage and curiosity like a child in my pursuits.
When was the last time you embarked on true childlike play?
Images from Gallery Hip.
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Read This If You Don’t Have Enough Time In The Day
Don’t we all need more time? Twenty-four hours a day doesn’t seem to be enough to conquer our long to-do list. I used to live my life thinking I never had enough time. I always had too many things to do. I was tired, stressed, and over-allocated.