Finding the Innocent Within

At a recent workshop I took a group through a simple visualization exercise that produced unexpectedly pleasing results. In almost every case the participants took the exercise as an opportunity to go back in time to access some more innocent, or at least simpler, part of themselves. This was surprising to me as the exercise was ‘neutrally slanted’ - it could have gone anywhere in time.

It demonstrated to us all, yet again, that when we need to find our strengths we tend to look to the Innocent archetype (sometimes wrongly called the ‘inner child’) to remind us of what brings us joy.

It was then that one of the participants made a series of statements that were humorous and yet fascinating. Why is it, he said, that we have to be forced to take breaks from our office cubicles? In first grade we were ordered to go outside and play. We had to go. Today most workers don’t make time for any exercise at all. And why is it that at age seven the knees of our jeans were always ripped from climbing and playing, but today our pants wear out on the part that rubs on our office chairs? Why was $20 such an endless invitation to fun when we were 10, and today we can’t have any fun at all unless we drop a couple of hundred? In fact, if we’re so much older and wiser than we were then, why do we have less fun, fewer games, and spend more on it all?

Something is backwards, you may say.

We could spend a lot of time analysing this of course, and I’m sure someone will. There’s a doctoral dissertation right there. Me, I’m off to play outside.

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