Kid At Heart?

What does it mean to be a kid at heart?

I received a text from my cousin Bill right before Halloween. He asked if I was going to “haunt the yard” on October 31st. It’s like he blew the dust off a long forgotten memory; I suddenly recalled the two of us running around the yard as if we were invisible and pretending to be malevolent ghosts. Or, as he phrased it in another text, “2 dorky kids running around your yard yelling and howling.”

To be young, or to be a kid, at heart, does not suggest that I am going to be repeating this particular behavior at the age of 66. But the mental attitude that says, “Well, maybe…” is important here. So many people say to me, “Well, now that I’m old…” meaning they have reached some serious age. I hear this from people who are 68, 51, and I have even head it from past students at the ripe old age of 22.

Forget that. How should we think differently when we get older? When we’re infants we get to cry to express distress. As we age, we’re supposed to “grow up” and have a mature attitude about life. While I don’t deny that accepting responsibility and taking one’s place in society is necessary, we don’t have to turn away from the attitude of play. We are supposed to “put away the things of a child,”according to the Bible (1 Corinthians 13:11, if you’re interested), but we must retain the playful nature of the child.

This is how to survive mentally in our world. Be serious, but don’t take it so seriously that worry, concern, and fear consume us. We need to be that young teen with the sword entering the Jabberwock’s forest to slay our greatest fear—and take each step with a wry smile.

Just don’t be a wise-ass kid.

To leave you with a commercial message: my audio series Kid Again (episodes available on my podcast Audio Chimera and the StoryZ YouTube channel) deals with a man who suddenly finds himself as a 13-year old boy again. Here he has a mature view while trying to maintain the appearance of still being who he was before. It’s a fine line. Back to my main point: we need to maintain that youthful person inside us (and not listening to that destructive 10 year old —the wrong kind of ghost from the past—who tries to keep us from doing what we must.)