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Do you remember when self-help books went through the “inner child” spasm? It may have been the longest spasm in the annals of self-help publishing. I take several self-help publications and I clearly recall that all of them would feature a new book or expert on the inner child. This was a healthy thing but there was one unhealthy aspect of it and that was not writing about the playful child, the inner part of us that relishes fun and laughter. Vernon Howard did me a big favor when he clearly taught that I should make my own self the center of my lifetime study. But even Vernon did not talk about the fun-loving inner child. Our lives are our learning labs. I have come to see little kinks and traits in myself that shock me. But I have also found little pearls of goodness that go all the way back to my earliest years. Recently I wrote to a reader, “One who is willing to develop a keen awareness of his/her own self and to study their reactions and patterns will have an extremely interesting life. They will be continually shocked and blessed.” The shocking things will usually come from memories of early abuse that keep stealing the joy of today. Some shocks will come from our own decisions that led us down painful paths. It’s the blessing part we don’t study enough. That’s the playful inner child, the fun-lover, even the slightly mischievous little child we have been at times. Unless we study this fascinating, lovable little guy, we will miss a lot of fun and growth. Have you found yourself to be an incredible source of wonder and amazement? If not, you are too morbid in your self-study. If you continue down that road, you will spend your life in a briar patch, continually pricked by guilt. Get out of the briar patch and go to the game room. When you were a child, many wonderful traits sparkled forth in your life. They became a vital part of your personality pattern but if you do not acknowledge and claim them they cannot be fully realized and developed. I remember when I was a child that I befriended kids who were ridiculed. Like a boy with an ear infection that caused him to keep cotton in his ears all through the elementary grades. We played together. Later a boy who was crippled from polio became my best friend. He never weighed more than 70 pounds in his life. It was the inner playful child, as well as the caring child, that made me love the downtrodden. I loved to make new friends and let them know they were all right just they were. My playful child was creative. I created games like corkball where we batted a fishing cork. The bat was a bolo paddle on the end of a stick. I created at least a half dozen games like that. More ideas come to us in playful activities than in all our somber times. That is exactly my point. Unless we return to childhood and study our playful child, we will not realize the source of our creativity or be inclined to stimulate the growth of that part of our selves. To get yourself started mining the jewels in your fun-loving inner child, sit down and write out ten fun things or just plain funny things you did when you were a child. Then ask yourself, “How are these things now showing up in my life?” You will discover that each one has produced positive results and are clearly observable in the person you are right now. You are the most interesting person you will ever meet because there are depths and dimensions of your being that you can discover and explore as long as you live. Walk back in time with your inner playful child and meet yourself.
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