An Opportunity to Remember an Earlier Version of Yourself


He Was Me

I came across this short movie by Peter Reynolds via Patty Digh’s excellent blog 37 Days. Bonding with our “inner child” has been all the rage these past couple of decades. Personally, the whole idea of an inner child has not particularly thrilled me. It has always felt trite and too contrived. Yet I know that a part of me still has my childlike wonder, creativity and incessant desire to learn new things. This child part of me was also not afraid to fail in the service of learning of new things and was much more authentic in expressing her feelings before she learned what was appropriate in her family and the world. The child in me who has now morphed into an adult still lives and still longs to express herself in both good ways and ways that are not always best for the adult version of me.

“He Was Me” provided me with an opportunity to ponder the many experiences that I have chosen to forgo because they are not appropriately adult. Most of these experiences involve having fun, pretending, being silly and much to my surprise, involve a healthy amount of creativity. It’s sad for me to realize that I have an unconscious picture of adults being stodgy, serious, uptight and definitely not fun! This could describe my parents who were my first role models in the world of adulthood.

Now that I am middle-aged and edging closer to old age every day, I find myself feeling at least ten years younger than my actual age. Perhaps this is true of most people as they age or it is yet one more attribute of being a member of the baby boom generation. I also notice that I give myself much more permission to act childlike as opposed to behaving in an immature fashion. When I allow my childlike wonder, curiosity and optimism to suffuse my adult being, I feel whole and happy. When I deny myself access to these feelings, I feel disconnected from others and disquieted.

My 22 year old nephew recently traveled with his girlfriend and her father and step-mother. During his witty and animated description of the trip he mentioned something about traveling with middle-aged people. Given that I was the same age as his girlfriend’s father and step-mother, I was horrified to experience myself as a middle-aged woman. Intellectually I know that I am a middle-aged woman but I notice I still equate middle age and adulthood with my outmoded picture of being tedious, boring and slow-moving much like the character in “He Was Me”. I am actually not that way although I do exhibit some of those characteristics every once in a while. Perhaps it is time for me to upgrade my inner picture of myself and fully integrate my childlike traits into my adult persona.

What parts of you have you disowned in the process of aging?
What childlike characteristics would be of benefit to you today?
How are you and your younger selves integrated in your life now?

I believe the most powerful message of “He Was Me” is that he is me is also true. There is a childlike part of ourselves that is still available to access whenever we want. So too, children have access to wisdom that seemingly only adults could know. My younger version of adulthood painted adults as dead, having sacrificed their own childlike qualities to survive in the world that they faced at the time. Although my child self was more alive in some ways than I often allow myself to be now, she was also deadening herself and thus I am much more alive today than I was when I was younger. We are all who were and we are all who we are. Our sense of self is continually deepening and expanding. Perhaps Peter Reynolds next film will be “He Was, Is and Always Will Be All of Me”.

[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] [Ma.gnolia] [Reddit] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Twitter] [Email] More »
VN:F [1.9.13_1145]
Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)
VN:F [1.9.13_1145]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
An Opportunity to Remember an Earlier Version of Yourself, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating
This entry was written by Judith Cohen, MCC, CPCC and posted on July 23, 2009 at 2:11 pm and filed under Psychology. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.

Leave a Reply