We used to be so free as children, so in tune with ourselves, so present, so creative, going alongside and living a full life each day. We played a lot as children but we never put on a mask or pretended to be anything we weren’t meant to be.

A child is exactly like the rest of nature. Water is water, lamb is a lamb, a bird is a bird, rose is a rose, the sun is the sun. 

The adult human being is the only thing in the history of the universe to be one thing and pretend to be another thing. Think on that for a bit longer. We are the only species, not even, a specific type of our species to pretend to be something we’re not. Everything else acts in accordance with nature.

We tell children off when they’re ‘acting out’ when in reality they are just expressing themselves and being their full authentic selves. And when children do something naughty (whatever the fuck that means)… we punish them for being and telling the truth. This done enough times the child starts to be something it’s not to fit in, to be accepted in sacrifice of being their true self.

Soon that child will grow up and say “I do not know who I am”, and there are more lost adults today in the world than ever before. Why?

Because they had to stuff themselves down to be seen as normal, again… to be accepted, they have lost the truth about themselves having hidden it for so long, from everyone and from themselves, that’s the danger adults put onto children, trying to cage them in this specific way you want them to be, which is totally fucking selfish.  

And in a lot of cultures, not just parents but other adults try to steer children to a path they want them to go down, leading children down a path of self-glorification rather than pure self-expression. 

That’s death.

People lose their innocence because they choose not to be themselves. Adults try to be something. Children just are.

A child surrenders to its nature and becomes simply what it is.

Adults ruin the innocence of children by telling them to imitate somebody, destroying the spark of authenticity and originality they have. There will never be anyone like the individual we are.

All of us are born unique. This uniqueness is marked genetically in our DNA. We are a one-time phenomenon in the Universe — our exact genetic makeup has never occurred before nor will it ever be repeated. – Robert Greene

That’s not a coincidence. There are no coincidences. 

The moment you try to be like someone else, you have prostituted yourself. This is the price you pay to be accepted by society. The moment you compare and compete you have lost your edge, your simplicity of being yourself. You lost your unfair advantage. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way. If you bring awareness to this hell on earth and experience the disturbing emptiness it brings, something may click within you that you don’t want to go down this path because you know where it ends up.

You’ll break free from the shackles of comparing, competing and dependence then you will enter the kingdom of freedom and innocence where children live.

Until next time,

Brody

PS

From The Book of Love – The Last Meditations by Anthony De Mello 

How much of the innocence of childhood do you still retain, is there anyone today in whose presence you can be simply and totally yourself, as nakedly open and as innocent as a child?