Good to be childlike

I ran across this song being played on some ad. They just used a bit of the chorus of it, but it was distinctive enough that I looked it up:



The Free Design. I had never heard of them but I wonder now if that song was floating around when I was a child because it is vaguely familiar. Actually, the whole style that that song comes from - the name Sunshine Pop, which I like, has been applied to it - was around when I was a small child. I remember The Association and The 5th Dimension, in particular, and later on I remember hearing The Turtles on a "classic rock" channel.


I have to admit I like the style. It's a bit like bubblegum pop in that it doesn't try hard to be deep and emotional, but rather does seem to appeal to a childlike sense in us. (And yes, I have created a Pandora channel based on it)

I also admit the first time I listened to the song it made me a little sad - I would never take off my shoes and socks and run (fire ants! bee nests in the ground!) and also more metaphorically, I feel like I have too many responsibilities to totally enter into the spirit of the song. (Also, I think perhaps that style of music and its message was far more aimed at people in their late teens and early 20s than a 40-something person). And maybe I am a little afraid to seem "young and free" - when I was younger, because I was so bent on making people know I was a Responsible Grownup and now, because I think maybe I'm a little old for that stuff. Or that other people would think I was too old and think it was odd for me to indulge in it.

And yet, as Lynn once noted, I do remember a lot from my childhood. And I can kind of remember running around in the neighborhood, exploring, or going out and picking wild strawberries. Or climbing trees. Or catching fireflies. All of that kind of stuff. And by and large (at least when I was not dealing with the mean kids at school) they were pretty good times. I confess I miss summer vacation from when I was a kid - a couple months of completely open free time, playing outside, going to the library to get books sometimes twice a week, building stuff with Lego, playing with my stuffed animals or my little plastic toy animals, making things, flying kites.....I guess most kids today don't get that because most kids are in two-career families or there are other challenges.

But I was happier then. I mean, I wasn't the most happy-go-lucky little kid ever, and I had my problems and anxieties, but I remember myself as being generally happier, or at least more easily completely distractible from the stuff that bothered me than I am now. I'd like to recapture some of that.

(Alternatively: It's like Jane and Michael Stern said, and that no matter how miserable childhood was, the farther you get from it, the better you remember it as being.)

As an adult, I admit I feel like I SHOULD partake in some "adult" things - watching the news and the political talk shows being one thing - but I really honestly don't want to. I'd rather watch cartoons and I have to admit I'm *happier* when I watch cartoons or things like nice and fun movies. And maybe I also have a less-pessimistic view of humanity.

And I still admit that doing stuff like making "critters" or amigurumi makes me happy out of all proportion that it should. So I keep doing it, even though I've reached Peak Pony long before now. And my love of funny novelty fabrics for quilts is part of that (the current quilt is using fairy-tale themed fabrics with unicorns and frog-princes and the Princess and the Pea on it).

Though I have to say a lot of the "whimsy" I indulge in is private and most other people don't know a thing about it.


So, it is good to be childlike (and I use CS Lewis' differentiation between childlike - which includes a sense of joy and wonder at the world - and childish - which is self-centered and selfish)