Whilst laying in the bath I had a thought about a passage from Corinthians … I had to Google it to be honest with you … it’s 13:11 and goes like this:
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways.
For years that worried me that line. I believed it meant that at some point it was essential to grow up, to quite literally set aside childish ways … that’s a scary thought for someone who loves messing about and having fun with people of all ages not worrying about what others think and then, in the midst of the bubbles my mind worked it out for me. All these years I looked at it wrong. It is not telling me to stop thinking young thoughts, on the contrary, it is reminding me of what it is that children think of. They want to be grown up, it is a dream to be an adult, to have the rights and privileges of being an adult. They don’t want to ‘just’ be children. This is the childish way the passage refers to. It’s an instruction to stop trying to be something we’re not. Stop looking for and expecting that time in our life when we are an all encompassing adult and look within ourselves. Realise that the child never leaves us, who we were is who we are.
Considering this we can move on with life free of worries about how we should be, how others expect us to be, what is the normal we must become. We realise that we always had all the tools we needed to be ourselves. It is not for others to judge us, they will, of course, but they will despite us. Attempting to be someone we are not to please others is to give away our right ‘to be’.
Now this makes sense to me, rather than setting aside my childish ways, I am embracing them, all except for that part of me who wanted to be someone or something else. I am happy and, you should be happy to be just the ever so special people we are.