Nurture the Child

Bang.

We all have an inner child within that holds the answers to hidden questions; that holds the key to locked doors from our past. This little child sits on a doorstep on a hot summer day, swinging their legs back and forth, wanting to play, yet not understanding why people are so mean; why their friends insist on picking on them. The child only understands simplicity; innocence; it only understands the freedom of laughter.

Yet as we grow older, the idea of innocence becomes lost amongst the trials and tribulations of life: simplicity becomes a tormented past; a tormented past becomes a childhood lost; a childhood lost becomes the result of an unhappy adult.

Picture your self as a child again: What would you look like? What was important to you? I see a young boy with unruly curly locks; a demeanour of stubbornness and a look of determination on my face with arms crossed; and a strapping of six shooters around my waist, ready to draw and shoot if the camera does not click fast and the flash goes off. A moment captured in the archives of time. Can you see me? It is from this image that I will tell a story. Here you go, and may you enjoy.

Bang.

No matter where you read this or what background you may be from, it will be the same for us one and all: once upon a time we were all children. Everything was new; everything was an adventure; and our Mothers were always seemingly telling us what to do: Come to dinner, wash your face, close the door because we are not paying to heat up the neighbourhood, and so on and so on. Yet she was the one we always ran to after falling and scraping our knees; the only one who knew how to heal all travesties with the magic of a simple kiss; the one who tucked us in at night and made our dreams sweet with a story or a whispered "I love you."

What happens to us as we grow older? What do we lose in the swirling sands of time? Why must we always be so serious now when it is so much easier to laugh and smile instead?

Why indeed.

A wise woman once told me it is important to talk to that child from within; that it is necessary for personal growth; that it enables us to release torment from our past; that it allows us to heal, nay, it allows us to be free once more. She told me to lay in bed, to close my eyes, and to drop into my inner conscious and find that young child once again.

She asked me to not only find him, but to have a conversation with him; to take his hand and walk a while with him by my side; to listen to his words of unfathomable wisdom; to realize this very same child would one day become, well; would one day become me.

I know it sounds crazy, believe me I do. But I closed off the world for an hour or so before sleep last night; I ignored the worries of adulthood; and went in search of childhood. I found a young boy all by him self, running around with no one to play, and yet still smiling and still laughing. I took him by the hand and asked him how he was; took him by the hand and asked him if he was okay. In his eyes I saw the innocence of youth. In his smile I saw the memory of summer past. In his stature I saw the determination of an unforseeable future.

Bang.

We talked. I listened. We laughed. I healed. Not too much later he asked if it was okay for him to go and find his friends so he could play.

"Will you come back again?" He asked. "I would like it very much if you would come back again so we could talk some more."

Yes, I said, yes. I would like that very much.

"Promise?" He asked once more.

Yes, I said, I promise.

Then he smiled at me and walked away. As I watched him go, the child suddenly turned around with guns drawn and said "Bang." He ran away giggling into the hot summer sun and trailing peals of childish joy behind him. He ran away leaving a man in awe of life.

Find your child within. Find the time to take them by the hand and walk along the dusty roads of forgotten paths. Find the time to talk. Find the time to listen. Find the time to laugh like a child again. But, above all, find the time to heal. Find the time to remember who we were eventually becomes what we are.

Dream. Search. Question. Live. Until we meet again, my friends, until we meet again.

"Beauty is being in harmony with what you are." - Peter Nivio Zarlenga