Cultivating The Child In Us

Eternal youth may lie in our ability to keep our childlike gaze. As we grow up, the world expects new things from us, which in turn changes us. This makes us lose our freshness and cheerfulness little by little. How can we preserve the qualities of childhood in order to better live our adult life?

The child is a role that we all occupy but few are those who manage to keep the natural qualities of the child throughout their lives. What characterizes childhood, beyond its innocence, is above all its relationship to the world and especially its curiosity. The child knows that he does not know, he presents himself as a beginner in everything he does. This humility associated with a thirst for discovery that makes childhood a golden age. Adulthood can be disabling in that it forces us to believe that we know when we know that we don’t know a lot of things. The illusion of knowledge is the main obstacle to our quest for the world and our taste for adventure. By adopting the belief that we know, we reduce our capacity to learn and this attitude paralyzes us in our progress.

A child is alive because it is in motion and acts with a free spirit. His flexibility allows him to show empathy, which allows him to communicate better with others. Of course, children aren’t perfect, but since they don’t label people, they can see beyond appearances where adults often get stuck.

Cultivating children’s qualities is within everyone’s reach, as long as the 3 values of the kingdom of childhood are play, sincerity and non-ego.

The game. What motivates every child is the search for play and the deep joy it brings. The child generally leads a freer existence (alas this is not true in all countries) than the adult since he is not forced to work to ensure his subsistence, he sees above all the world as a playground. Life is seen only through the prism of play and this is even what seems to distinguish it from the adult world. Over time, children will learn that the adult world is about doing boring or demanding tasks. Recreating play in your daily life will allow you to reconnect with the child you used to be and who may not have completely disappeared inside you. Play brings joy, but it is also the first source of creation in a child. The child always innovates in a playful context. Be inspired by children by looking for play where it is a priori absent. The monotony of the adult world can be avoided by rediscovering the simple yet delicious joys of play. Take Roberto Benigni as an example: life is beautiful, even if it is difficult to match such ingenuity and drive.

Sincerity. The truth as the saying goes comes out of the mouths of children. Perhaps it would be good to put some sincerity back into our lives. It is an ingredient of happiness. Sincerity consists in saying what we think, which does not prevent us from thinking what we say. Telling the truth, first of all to oneself, is necessary to make the right decisions because adult life can lead us to hide our face and finally live a life in half-tone because we are living the life of another, the life that was imposed on us. Sincerity is liberating, it brings clarity where confusion reigns, it gives us the path to greater satisfaction.

The non-ego. Children are not free of faults, but it is true that by definition, because of their young lives, they have not accumulated too many egotistical marks that come mainly from experience. Freud even said that the infant did not manage to distinguish his own identity from that of his mother and it is from this progressive separation that the troubles and sufferings of existence come from. Children judge others less because everything is new to them in some way. They discover the world, they don’t have preconceived ideas. This freshness makes them better able to learn. Be like them, learn to humiliate yourself somehow, try to diminish your ego by doing humble tasks in which your vulnerability shows. Such an attitude will allow you to see the world better, let alone understand it better.