"It's not the loss of innocence that counts. It's the innocence itself"

I recently spent some time over my friend, Andrew’s house with him and his family and on one particular day (when the power went out and I had absolutely nothing to do), I decided to sit down and write Andrew a letter. This is a habit of mine. He must have a drawer full of cards, letters, and poems by now. I’m a sappy sentimental, what can I say?

At any rate, when I started, I had no idea what I wanted to write about or what I wanted to say. As I began to write though, it came to me. Part of the reason (I believe) that our friendship has endured is that neither one of us has ever truly let go of the child within us both. We all have it. Now weather we chose to acknowledge or pay attention to it, is another story.

I find this to be an extremely important part of survival in this world that we live in. With the pressures, the money, the illness, the every day mundane tasks we’re forced to do, it’s so easy to forget about that time when almost nothing mattered; when your biggest problem was what kind of ice cream you wanted from Mr. Softie. In recent years, I’ve come to embrace that child. That kid who danced in front of a mirror for hours with a cheap fedora singing “Get Happy” is still here and he gives me hope and encouragement every day. He had a dream and it’s up to me to follow through with it.

We as humans need dreams, we need fantasy, we need things that make us happy. Though we can never return to that time of monsters under the bed, Santa Clause, and Tooth Fairies, we have the memory of it. The memory of that time when absolutely anything was possible if you believed. Kids have it all figured out. It’s we, as adults who over think and complicate things.

In reference to Judy Garland, I once heard someone say, “It was not the loss of innocence that counted. It was the innocence itself.” How true that is. Don’t let the pressures of your life force you to forget that there was a happy time and mind set and that there still can be.

We’re still those same kids with the same hearts and minds and hopes and dreams. We owe it to them to give them what they dreamed of. They’re always with us and the sooner we embrace them and love them, the sooner we can embrace and love ourselves.

I’ve seen parents live through their children yet still be completely unable to relate to them emotionally. I don’t understand this. I feel like our childhood shapes who we are and who we become. How could you completely forget what it felt like to be a kid and how dare you think of yourself as to “grown up” or “mature” to sympathize with them?

I think it’s time we all sat down, took a long, hard look at ourselves, tear down that brick wall we’ve managed to build over all these years and just let ourselves be. Remember the child, remember the innocence, remember the excitement, the possibilities. Keep in mind the Lands Of Oz and the Neverlands that got us through. It was like that once and it can be again. Just have the blind faith of a child. Stop allowing yourself to become so cynical and put some trust in humanity and in yourself. Sometimes that’s all it takes.