This piece was originally featured in Five-Minute Letters by Kashara Johnson.
In the past year it has been my goal to return to my body. I felt urged to be in my senses so that I could be present in my life. I missed myself, though I am still me. So, where did this desire stem from? Time spent with this question led me to think that I was most myself as a child and young adult—early life when I was vital and passionate. I no longer believe this is the case. Not quite.
As we grow, which is a lifelong process, accumulating experience and information causes us to lose touch, intermittently or continuously, with the world as an imaginative extension of ourselves. To not be fully present at all times is a way of caring for ourselves, but this is not what I mean. I mean numbing and retreating. This is typically because of trauma on a greater or lesser scale. Even if trauma doesn’t feel like the accurate descriptor, we collect wounds that sink from the surface to the subconscious as time passes. As a consequence, we dive into ourselves and may never surface again.
This process is often lamented as the loss of youth or simply, becoming an adult. Along with what we experienced in early life, being grown means more to think about and more to take in. Much of the outer, even what is beyond our reach, bleeds into our inner landscape, joining the wounds. Increasingly, our lives and responsibilities feel indistinguishable from the world beyond. But, all we can be is ourselves. All we can experience is from our perspectives and unique experiences.
Ever since my mid-twenties, I’ve heard people wishing for their childhood, romanticizing into something that likely, isn’t entirely true. They pine for the clarity, the passion, the radiance of what was, and devastatingly, can never be again. That state is related to the newness of life, which is partially true, but not the whole of it. I don’t think so.
The wish to return to childlike perspectives, the immediacy of the surroundings, the vibrant beauty, and unbridled enthusiasm is not truly a desire to return to our early lives. That way of being is not just a quality of childhood. It is elemental selves. Our souls. Our cores of being.
Admittedly, I pine for childhood. I grieve for the people who were present and are no more. I wish to not know the pain that had yet to surface or that I’d yet to experience. There is also the element of nostalgia for the music, shows, and technology.
But if I acknowledge and accept that my life belongs to me, I can see the value in moving forward with the vivacity of a return to self.
I can perceive with as much tenderness as childhood. It wells up from the self. I’m able to access immediacy, but now I have the benefit of being an adult. Perhaps the most wonderful part of being an adult is that I am the determiner for myself. I can’t control everything or most things, but I have the capability to determine what that deep, knowing voice, which may also be that childlike voice, likes. I can care for myself, though this is a learning process. I am vulnerable, but it is a decision—an act of courage.
I don’t expect stability or comfort all the time. I can expect meaning—even if it takes a long, long time to accept it. This isn’t to say some causes of pain aren’t meaningless. I’d be spinning into “happy no matter what” and “everything happens for a reason” territory if I thought otherwise.
Unexpected things will happen to me, especially if I open myself to life, but I have tools I couldn’t have had as a child. I bring with me profound loss and respect for the passing of time, which, admittedly I fight more than I accept. My chest fills with the pleasure of possibility if I consider the implications of merging myself and the world in this way. From this point of view, everything in my surroundings can be art.
This is not to deny the preciousness of childhood. It is to assert that each stage of our life is precious. We often regard the elements of our youths with reverence. Sometimes, we build shrines to them as adults. We can treat each stage of our life this way. It’s possible to look at all we love and regard them with the enthusiasm of childhood and the nostalgia for what was. We can look through this lens at the present. We have the capacity to hold many things as true—how wonderful and horrible it all is.
We’re matryoshka dolls, each version contained within. Contained in that first shell, we are both separate and integrated.
We are
past, present, and future,
evolution and stillness,
imagination and reality.
A new year approaches here in the United States. Often, we hear “new year, new me.” When we are advertised to, it is “new year, new you.”
The effort to become new is rarely fruitful. At worst, it’s a horror story—a cautionary tale. I say, “all your life, all you.” You don’t have to bring the entirety of yourself to each moment, but you have access to your boundless psyche all the time.
I love this. There are so many ideas here that I would love to dig into in a conversation, or I can just let them settle and take root on their own with an occasional re-reading.