Let the kid within you be a part of your life.

I cannot begin to explain what introspection can do for one’s growth. All that you need to know you already have somewhere within you. It’s all in there, it simply must be found.

I also see the importance of looking into one’s past, in my case, of the things that I have done, where I have gone, what I used to be. It’s all within me, a part of who I am. It is what’s made what is moving and breathing and doing, right now.

In many ways, I see both as different forms of the same thing. Because the past has brought me to where I am now, and all my memories, all my experiences, all my younger me’s are what make me what I am now. They’re a part of me, and looking within (introspection) is often much like looking at my old selves (looking into the past).

I look back at the younger versions of me, and sometimes wish that I could have done things better. But this is a negative way of looking at a huge positive, because I know that my past experiences, mistakes and all, have brought me to where I am at the present. I could not have grown to where I am now without it all.

Chunks of my childhood stand out to me in particular, and I’m not alone in sometimes missing the days when things were so “simple”. Either way, I think it was a valuable time for me as a period of growth, of course, but I also think that those memories keep a front-row seat in my mind I’m missing something in my life that I was exposed to them. Allow me to explain:

We always say we were this and that. I was a toddler, I was seven years old, I was a sixth grader. As if we are no longer those things, and have moved on completely.

This isn’t true, though, at least not for me. These things still live within me. I am still a toddler, seven, and in sixth grade. I have never “moved beyond” these things so as to leave them behind, as they are a part of who I am now. I have simply grown into a new place in my life.

The reason why I’m saying these things is because they matter. We try to forget who we were, what we’ve done, where we’ve been. We all eventually enter the “world of adults” and it’s bye-bye childhood from there. Suddenly everything is about money, about success, about complicated, twisted issues. Stress, stress, stress.

We cannot forget.

Why do we do this? Because everyone else does. So we willingly dive into the whirlpool to see where it takes us. Anything that was done in childhood is for children. Adults are not children!

But they are, we all are. And there is so much we can learn from children if we look back at our own childhoods and relive what happened then. Sure, the world may be a bit different when you’re an adult. Yes, there are actually responsibilities and struggles that weren’t there before, but that doesn’t mean we have give up the beautiful, life-filled energy that we had when we were younger. We don’t have to let go of the free-ness, the wildness we once had. We still have that passion burning – a flame inside.

Most importantly, somewhere within us, we still have the innate ability to let life flow and whoosh around us. I don’t mean that we let life slip right by, that’s what adults, you or I, are doing by letting worries cloud our vision so heavily. I mean truly feeling life as it rushes through you.

Let the kid within you be a part of your life.