Try and inject a little more of that childhood attitude of wonder into our adult lives

Watching all the cute little kids in their trick-or-treating costumes, running around ecstatic about all the free candy they were collecting, I couldn’t help but think how great it was to be a little kid. So oblivious to the problems in the world, wide-eyed with excitement about even the littlest things, believing in fairy tales and bedtime stories and beloved characters, laughing with your entire body in the way only a child can laugh, spending hours on end coloring with your crayons or using sidewalk chalk to draw your own city streets and shops on your driveway so you could whiz around them on your big wheel, watching Saturday morning cartoons in your pjs, playing kick-the-can and hide-and-go-seek til it got dark, being so spontaneous that you were willing to try anything on a moment’s notice, swinging back and forth on the swingset holding the chain so you could lean back as far as you could in the swing keeping your legs outstretched toward the sky to try and go as high as you could possibly go, totally absorbed in your play until mom yells that dinner is ready, and being tucked in with a bedtime story and a kiss and hug every night…. Yes it really was great to be a kid.

And even though we all admittedly spent a good portion of our childhoods wishing we were grown-ups so we could drive a car and buy every toys for ourselves without having to wait on Santa, the reality is that once we hit adulthood we all end us wishing we could somehow feel that childlike wonder and awe again, that we could still believe wholeheartedly in fairy tales, that we could laugh with our whole bodies and be present in each moment without worrying about what the future will hold, that we could be spontaneous without worrying about all the responsibilities we carry, that we could get totally absorbed in playing and then have someone call us in for dinner, and that we could have someone there every night to read us a bedtime story and to tuck us in with a hug and a kiss.

While it’s not possible to go back and be a kid again, I think we ought to try and inject a little more of that childhood attitude of wonder into our adult lives.  Perhaps today we could all try to be just a bit more spontaneous, keeping present for each moment, try laugh with our entire body, and be completely fearless!

~Amy Rees Anderson

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