People say only a mad man talks to himself...
Well I'm not mad, but i talk to myself a lot
I read this story and started a conversation with my mind.
Baby james was playing on the bed in the room when he noticed something... his parents weren't watching... their attention was drawn away arguing over who's going to mars.
Then he saw something else.
It was red, then orange with a hint of blue, dancing like nothing he had ever seen before.
That was when he got this really smart idea
"I'm gonna touch it !!!"
So he crawled over to the other side of the room and reached out.
Aaariiiyyn Aaariiiyyn Aaariiiyyn,
he cried and cried cause he got burnt
That was the day Baby James became an adult and vowed to never touch fire again.
Me: It's safe to say Baby James never grew up to become a firefighter because he learnt from a very young age, If you play with fire... YOU GET BURNED.
My Mind: That's what becoming an adult looks like. Being an adult is being mature knowing what not to do and what to do, then doing them. Except...
Me: What??
My Mind: Except nobody really handed us a manual to tell us what to do and what not to do... I mean some of us had school rules, house rules, the society which made up our manual but they were all very misleading.
Me: Misleading??
My Mind: Yesss.
Remember in secondary school, we were punished for holding a girl's hand, they would say "if you touch a girl she would get pregnant" then that same person would tell us to hold hands for prayer in church???? Misleading!!!
Me: Yeah, but like that was to prevent this thing na... you get?
My Mind: Yeah yeah, I get, that was not the only one though, but I get, they all had good intentions.
But ultimately it left us to figure out for ourselves, what's right or wrong, what's okay or not, obviously there were some that were easy like"Killing is bad" simple, but how was I supposed to know never to tell a girl she looked a bit old.
Me: Yeah... she almost killed us...
My Mind: But like if you think about it. How did our parents, schools and society come up with those rules...
They learnt from their parents who learnt from their parents who learnt from... follow that rabbit hole all the way down and you'll find the same story. Someone touched the fire. Or watched someone else touch it and get burned.
Me: Hmm...Learn from other people's mistakes, instead of making your own... That's a wise thing to do, so what's the problem with that????
My Mind: The problem is if everyone learned never to touch fire... we'd all be dead.
We'd have died of cold or something. And if we survived that, there'd be no houses, no towns, no innovation, no technology, no-
Me: It's okay, I get !!!
So you're saying we should disobey the rules? Don't learn from mistakes? Free reign - all hell breaks loose, just put our hands in the fire?
My Mind: No, no that's not what I mean, yes put hand's in fire but more maturely
Me: More maturely???
My Mind: Okay okay that didn't come out right. What I mean is - think like a child, but act like an adult.
Me: hmm explain.
My Mind: So, when the fire burns you, whether you touched it yourself or learned from someone who did, instead of thinking "okay, I'll never touch fire again." Think like a child. Come up with the next "genius" idea. "Maybe I can wear gloves and try again."
Then you try it and the gloves catch fire, you take it off quickly, it burns a little, but you're okay, so you have the next wise idea, "Fire burns because it's hot. What if I strap ice blocks to my hands?"
You try it. Your hand stays in longer this time. But the ice melts. So you have the next idea. Then the next. Then the next until eventually, you achieve what you set your mind to.
That's how you think like a child but act like an adult.
An adult never starts.
Thinking like an adult tells you "this will never work" before you've even tried. Not because you tested it, but because everyone around you said so. You say it's common knowledge or common sense.
Me: But some things genuinely don't work...
My Mind: Name one breakthrough, one real achievement, one invention that wasn't first considered impossible. Everything great was once something an adult "wasn't supposed to think."
Only a child "stupidly" thinks "I want to fly", or "I want to go to the moon" or "I want the car to drive by itself"
Yet only an adult can build airplanes, rockets, space ships and self-driving cars.
Me: So we need both.
Mind: Yeah you need both. The child to dream it and the adult to build it.
If you ever want to achieve anything great and actually be happy doing it you need to-
Me: Think like a child, act like an adult.
Chao!!!
What do you guys think? Do you agree?
I am currently chasing the dreams i had as a child, what about you ? What child like thoughts are you acting on today?
