May You Stay Forever Young

As I write this, there are still three full months left to 2020.  As such, I don’t want to challenge the fates by saying that this year can’t get any worse, because there’s still plenty of time left in this horrifying game of “Can You Top This?”.

Like you (I assume), I long for easier, simpler times.  Adulting is just no fun.  I’m reminded of an old joke: a child is complaining to his mother that he doesn’t want to go to school…he doesn’t like it, the kids make fun of him…you know the drill.  His mother responds, “You have to go to school.  You’re the principal”.  

I didn’t say it was a good joke.  I said it was an old one.

Sure, a global pandemic sounds like fun, but it has caused so much stress and anguish.  Being locked in must have been awful, and I write that not even knowing your family.  I suspect that the only ones who benefited from this lockdown were divorce lawyers and obstetricians.

If you’re tightly wound to begin with, the addition of forced imprisonment may have made you feel like a powderkeg ready to explode.  Wouldn’t it be great to be carefree again?

Hopefully the time is coming soon when we can all exhale.  Would it be so bad to be childlike again?

That’s “childlike”.  Not “childish”.  Big difference.

I was a fairly active child.  I fell more than my share of times and got the bumps and bruises to prove it.  Sound familiar?  Sound like what we go through on a daily basis?  Guess what: I survived those bruises and the many which have followed.  Having a scab showed that I’d done something…I’d tried.  Sure, I’ve fallen…many times…but those scabs can heal and besides, you get some cool stories to tell.

Within the grown-up world of promotional products, I was lucky enough to have known many creative people.  They were the ones who colored outside of the lines.  It’s the imaginative people in our lives who make things happen…often for good!  As a child, we always saw things through vastly different eyes.  There were no wrong ways to do things…there were simply our own ways.  Would it be so bad to play with the toys you now have, but in new and innovative ways?

What’s stopping you from having ice cream for dinner?  Unless you’re lactose intolerant, this doesn’t sound like such a bad on occasion (I can see my son shaking his head in agreement as he reads that).  Did you ask your parents if you could have ice cream for dinner?  Did they say “no”…every time?  Did that stop you from still asking?  What about now…do you see something you’d like or want to accomplish?  Are you going to take “no” for an answer?

I don’t know about you, but I could always determine how much fun I’d had by how dirty I was.  If I came home with filthy or ripped clothes, it was safe to say I’d been doing something I loved.  The same should hold true today.  Get dirty.  Don’t worry so much about the ink stains.

When we were kids, my younger cousin had an annoying habit of always following someone’s statement with a “why?’.  You know what I’m talking about.  My cousin was your cousin, too.  In retrospect, that might not have been so bad.  Always ask questions.  I read this somewhere: “If you ask the question that everyone is thinking, but nobody has the courage to answer out of fear they could look stupid, you’ll become the people’s champion”.  There are no dumb questions…just dumb people not asking questions.

Try some of these.  Break from the shackles of adulting on occasion.  It’ll do the mind and body good!

And by the way: you will never have to encourage me to take a nap!