Sad how growing older oft becomes the smothering of the innocent innovator – we are compelled to protect what’s within by never letting it out. And one day, we can’t remember what we dreamt the night before.
Through the course of adulthood the surface of childhood is wounded and scarred, like tree bark around the sapling; well intended…but ill begotten in the end.
Creativity is the uncloaking of passion, that is otherwise imprisoned by the broad black lines in our coloring books, with the grown up instruction, “shush now, and color within the lines.” I’m reminded of a picture from Kent State during the war protest – a college girl is placing the stem of a flower in the barrel of a national guardsman’s rifle. Images like this are misconstrued as an almost ineffectual act of creativity, passion, and love.
The world can only be saved by the minds of adults and the hearts of children. Of all the animal kingdom, the only species to not evolve is the child within a human. And for this I’m grateful.
Tomorrow I will imagine the conference table as a sandbox, our coffee cups as pails, and my colleagues are children and playmates (not the adult kind of playmates, they’d be fully dressed.)
Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to get my coffee and help my son build his Lego Ninjago toy. I explained to the girl at the counter, that 41 years ago I used to play with Lego’s – a whole barrel for 5 bucks…the half shoe box size set of Ninjago Legos were 84 bucks. No one said, remaining a child was going to be cheap!
Jimmy Buffett sang, “I’m growing older but not up, my metabolic rate is pleasantly stuck, let the winds of time blow over my head, I’d rather die while I’m living than live while I’m dead…” (he also has a song, “Life is Just a Tire Swing.”)
