When your inner child runs amok

The DailyOM today got a good laugh from me. Inner Child Meditation: Treasures From Our Past enthusiastically talks about meditating our inner child forward to reclaim “the wisdom and innocence that we possessed when we were children.”

There’s a lot of the usual talk of centering and focusing and mushy stuff about loving and protecting blah blah blah.

They make it sound so serious. Whenever anybody talks about getting in tune you’re your inner child, they always want to use words like wisdom, wonder, hope.

And they always want you to hug your inner child.

Maybe it’s just me, but my ‘inner child’ seldom holds still long enough for that kind of sentimental crap. She’s verrrrrrrry busy playing, and thinks all this grown up woo-woo stuff is stupid.

She’s also very seldom on the inside, really. She lives right out here with me, making impudent remarks, pointing out that we could so totally swing on that tree branch right there, screaming, “ICE CREAM! Ice cream ice cream ice cream ICE CREAM!!!” whenever the tinkling chimes of the ice cream truck are heard…

Not a whole lot of meditation needed on my part. In fact, it’s usually hard to get her to shut up a minute, so I can do grownup-stuff.

She doesn’t want to watch the news, she wants to watch cartoons. She doesn’t want to deal with taxes, she wants to play a video game. She wants to play with the Denizens. She wants to go in the backyard, she wants to run, she wants to play jump rope. (She’s not very good at it anymore, either, but don’t tell her I said that.)

She notices bugs and rainbows and drops of dew on grass. She manages to simultaneously appreciate them, and take them for granted. They’re all hers, because she is there and they are there…obviously, they are gifts meant for her, and her alone.

It seems kind of sad to me that some adults have to “meditate” to pull that part of themselves forward. Worse, that they have to be told how.

I’ve grown older…but I surely haven’t grown up much.

Whether or not that means I’ve got some kind of ‘inner child wisdom’ is a matter of great debate…but it does mean that I laugh an awful lot. And I don’t take things seriously-seriously. And also? TAG, YOU’RE IT!

{…runs off giggling…}