Taking things less seriously...

There's a super cheesy, overdone phrase people sometimes use to refer to the part of you that needs care- your "inner child". If you're overworked and need a break, your inner child needs to relax. If you're sad or depressed, your inner child needs comforting. If you're frightened, your inner child needs to be calmed. But, now that I think about it- the opposite is actually true. Our inner child takes care of us.

I was listening to this song by Jukebox the Ghost today that I love- Good Day. And in it, it talks about this place where the dead and living gather and revert back to their youth and frolic and cavort. It's really a rather cute song on the surface. But this one line struck me- "Running circles around ourselves just for fun". And I started to think about what it really meant to me. To "run circles around somebody" generally means to be way better than them at something. But the second part of the line- "just for fun"- implies it is not in a competitive manner, but a playful one. So I picture the youthful version of oneself running around the adult version of oneself and laughing. Not out of meanness, but because the child version is "free" and wears his "heart on [his] sleeve" without being "humbled" and "alone", as the adult is.

It's interesting to me that we believe we get smarter as we age. It seems to me that we just get more afraid. Or maybe we get more jaded. We get so focused on the details- the trees, that we no longer acknowledge that there is even a forest- a larger purpose- there. Maybe our "inner child" is actually there to remind us of what is really important about life- not to take it so seriously.



So I didn't get a chance to take many pictures today so I'm pulling from the other day. But I figured it was perfect for this post, because this is a fun shot to me. Even though it's not the greatest quality shot, I think it has a lot of emotional content that is relatable to this post.

Life's short, have fun.