How Three Year Olds Think, and Why We Should Always Keep our Ability to Play
Your point of view when you are two foot tall
Very young children not only have very vivid imaginations, but what they think of, the things that they perceive to be real, to them are real. For example, every three year old truly believe that if they close their eyes, they become invisible to all those around them.
How pure and easy is this thinking. If one thinks about it in adult terms, when you close your eyes, it is impossible to make eye contact with someone, therefore it is very easy to overlook this person. It is the eye contact that you make with people that allow you to see into their soul so to speak.
With animals, it is eye contact that in the end proves dominance, the better or bigger or the strongest, either in physical terms, or in terms of which one is going to not back down first. When you make and keep eye contact with a vicious dog, it is the one who averts the stare first who is the submissive one.
Anyway, back to the three year old person, it is in this simple thinking, the belief that he is invisible, that if he cannot see anybody, than in turn they cannot be seen, that as adults we laugh. For as adults we believe that we know better.
I believe that as adults we do ourselves harm when we stop believing some of these childlike thoughts. When as adults we stop believing in ghosts, we no longer believe in our imaginary friends, and we realize that we can be seen with our eyes open or closed.
When we lose these childlike beliefs, we also lose our innocence. We begin to block out any of the innocent beliefs we had in the tooth fairy, santa claus, and we lose the ability to some extent to live the happiness and fearlessness of our youth. It is when we realize these things as adults, that we also take on in our minds and emotional selves, the ability to live our sadness, to become depressed, and to lose our abilities to play, to let go of what we have been told by other adults, and be just the simplest child that we began this life with.
I think that when we lose that child inside, that we become a danger to our mental self. When we stop being children and stop playing and doing the things that makes that child inside of each of us happy, we take on all the dark truths of adulthood, we are committing suicide to part of our inner self.
Never allow anyone to tell you that you have to grow up, that you must stop playing and get down to the seriousness of work, and responsibility, you allow people to kill what made you who you are to begin with, and you make your life so serious, that it is no longer fun. You lose the best part of living, the fun part, the part that allows you to just close your eyes, and know that everyone around you, cannot see you.