Loving the site, in the past few hours it has helped me do the first 3 but now I think it’s time for number 4. Now, how can I be silly whilst making a coffee? It shouldn’t be too difficult, being silly is something that I am normally very good at:~)

1) Children are that way because they are being taken care of. They don’t NEED to worry about where the food comes from or where they’re going to live tomorrow; mom and dad take care of that for them.

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not a pessimist (though my previous words would SEEM to indicate so)…I’ve had great parents who although sometimes show undesirable characteristics, I know it’s because of all the shit they’ve had to deal with over the course of their lifetime – and they’ve done a great job in teaching me that we don’t need to lower ourselves to the common denominator. So all I’m really saying is that it isn’t right to emulate a child – the goal is to recognize the problems around you and to deal with each of those problems directly. If you just ‘forget’ about a bad thing that has happened, it will most likely happen again. and again. and again.

1) You’re right. Children are carefree because they’re provided for, but they’re also provided for because they lack the ability to take care of themselves. Just because we have things to worry about doesn’t mean we should worry about them… know what I mean? What I’m trying to say is that how you feel about your responsibilities is entirely down to perspective, not that they don’t exist.

2) I’m concerned for the future. I was even concerned for the future between the ages of 5 and 8, for example, I couldn’t wait to get home to carry on playing the game I left running. Seriously, though, it’s good to take appropriate steps to make sure that the world will be worth living in, in the future. It’s good to have aspirations for your achievements and personal development, too. But the path to the future is paved in the present. It’s good to think about the future but not to live in it.

3) Yes, there is an awful lot of shit out there, something I had an awareness of even as a child. However, back then I just wanted to understand it so I would know how to change them. Now, my understanding has improved, but along with that understanding comes the realisation that not everything can be changed. What I can do, though, is to make sure that *I* don’t become one of them – by staying true to the ideals I conceived in youth.

I’m not emulating a child. I remember how I used to think when I was a child, and to be honest, I said a lot of things that made a lot of sense, and not every adult took me seriously enough to understand them, though some did. I’ve grown a lot since then and I’ve seen a lot of unfortunate things, but all that does is just reinforce what I already believed to be true, and fill in much needed missing details. For all I have changed, I don’t think I have, much. And I feel good about that.

As we experience hardship we erect barriers around ourselves as a defense mechanism and become increasingly cynical and disillusioned, but in doing so we also cut ourselves off from our own passion, our own joy and love, our own idealism. By all means I am not advocating a complete return to naivete – we have had those experiences for a reason – but by chipping away at those barriers little by little and being more selective in their use I believe we can remember the lives we once lead and how much better they seemed by comparison, but we also have the choice to live however we want today.

If you just quiet the chatter of your mind for long enough to hear what your innermost self and feelings have been trying to tell you all along, and if you can develop the courage to be truly yourself in a world that, at times, seems downright threatening, you have the potential to live a far more fulfilling existence.

I also wish we were allowed to be more expressive and spontaneous in public. Being young was great – you could do more or less whatever and get away with it because you were ‘just a kid’. Damn social conditioning. Damn near kills the playful factor. Necessary as it might be to live in such large groups as we do, it seems a little unnecessarily sterile to my eyes.

Peace.