#108: We are free

We smile when we see a child playing.

Uninhibited and free, we watch their imaginations run wild. A cardboard box becomes a spaceship, a stick transforms into a sword. Hours pass in a world of their own making.

Adults watching them will often nostalgically think, if only we could be like that again. Free. Unburdened.

Children are free because their minds have not yet built the guardrails we call realism.

Their prefrontal cortex, the part that says "be sensible", "act your age", is still quiet. They have not yet been told what a box really is, or who they should be. They live in a space where stories of limitation have not yet taken hold. Their minds haven’t yet been shaped to shut things down.

That freedom is cognitive, emotional, and embodied.

Growing up

As we grow older, we slowly forget what it was like to be a child. We are adults; we have responsibilities.

For some, that child was forced to grow up sooner than they should have.

Yet deep down, the inner child remains, shaped by our early experiences and still present beneath the layers. We will work hard, sometimes subconsciously, to protect them especially if they once felt hurt, unsafe or powerless.

Over time, life often brings us back to ourselves. We begin to see that many of our present limits, doubts, fears and hesitations are old stories carried from the past. They are armour we built around the child within us.

In protecting that child, we have often silenced it.

But we are free

Most of the constraints in our lives are self-imposed; they are stories we tell ourselves.

The mind, so skilled in analysis, can also trap us in paralysis. The more we develop, the more we sometimes limit ourselves.

Yet within us lies more agency than we realise, or are brave enough to admit.

If we slow down, listen, and do the work to begin to understand what the inner child needs, and what we have done to protect them, we can start peeling away the armour.

With each layer removed, freedom returns.

The more we dig, the louder the voice of the inner child grows. We can hear the drumbeat of them banging on our insides to be let out. 

The steps we must take become clear. A conversation. An action. A letting go.

Facing it will not be easy. It may mean involve facing demons, confronting old fears or wounds long buried.

Letting go

But when we do, something shifts.

A weight lifts. Energy flows through us so powerfully that we physically feel it; a somatic release.

We feel a strength we had not known. A clarity that brings us back to who we truly are. We are now more powerful; we feel we can do things beyond our wildest dreams.

One night, we may catch ourselves in the mirror. And it will not be the familiar adult staring back.

It is the child.

They say the eyes never lie. And when you look deeply into them, they tell you all you need to know:

I am free,

You are free;

We are,

Free.

— AJ