You’re Never Too Old to Play
Recently I attended my 45th high school reunion. One classmate joined by video call from out of state and I smiled and waved enthusiastically when it was my turn on camera. Another classmate came over and said, “Now you’re acting like my granddaughter.” It wasn’t intended as a criticism exactly, but there was the implication that my enthusiasm was a bit unexpected.
As young children, we’re completely unselfconscious. We run and play on the playground, proudly show our latest crayon scribbles to our mothers. We don’t worry about whether our artistic creations are good enough, whether we’re making too much noise, whether we’re athletic enough, or whether someone will judge what we’re wearing.
Then as we go to school, we become more and more self-conscious. By the time we are 13 or 14, we’re constantly thinking about how others perceive us, wondering whether we’re good enough, smart enough, pretty enough. Whether that outfit we love will be considered weird, whether we’ll get teased about it. It becomes more important to fit in, to be accepted by our peers than to express our true selves. Eventually, we become middle aged and certain behaviors are considered undignified, only appropriate for young people and we stifle ourselves even more.
I don’t believe that we’re meant to hide away all our self-expression as we age. We can choose to release the conditioning that we’ve accepted as true. As I started receiving energy healing from other practitioners, I began releasing a lot of self-consciousness and started accessing the playfulness that I had as a child. I danced in the kitchen while washing dishes. I bought myself sequined tennis shoes.
Sometimes people are afraid that being playful means that they will lose their sense of what’s appropriate. That they won’t know when something is ridiculous or foolish. I don’t think accessing your inner child means that you lose your adult self and all you’ve learned. You can integrate them. You can be discerning about when it’s ok to be more playful and when you need to be more serious. And there are more opportunities to be spontaneous than you might think.
I wouldn’t wear a Halloween costume to a business meeting, but I did wear those sequined tennis shoes to my class reunion. It was fun and we all had a great time.
