At 40, I am convinced that we cosplay as adult characters to hide our inner child, mostly from ourselves. Some seem to allow the stresses of life and responsibilities to make the mask indistinguishable, but I doubt any truly make it real. Do you wear the mask of age over the eyes of your inner child? Does age hold a meaningful value to you beyond the comradery of shared experience?
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I love all the pleasantly deep answers in this thread.
For my input: I’m everything I ever was, all at once.
You know how lenses refract over each other at the optometrist? Or how colors combine when you stack transparent cups in the washer? That’s me. I have parts from everyone I ever met, and parts from everyone I ever was. There’s no mask, even if I focus on one part of the mosaic in a meeting vs. another when I nerd out w/ a buddy – it’s all equally me.
I’m not Shrek though. Onions have layers, but I’m prismatic glass, chips and dips and all.
I sort of feel the opposite. My childhood self was least like who I really am. Aging has been a process of becoming my true self and expressing it honestly. If anything, the only thing that feels like a mask is my aging body—but my spirit/truth is constantly in a process of being revealed.
No? I’m in my 40s and I’m never sure what people mean by inner child.
Like I try to do all the things I want to do but age does help you figure out what piper is worth paying.
Like I can eat like shit and play games for 12 hours but experience tells me that the next day I’ll feel like shit. Sometimes I’m happy to pay that price
I think it has a lot to do with how each of us are raised, but as a child, getting told to ‘grow up’ or when you grow up… along with concepts like don’t talk to strangers alone etc., creates this subtle perception of an age transition. I’ve come to view that bias as a subtle prejudice in a way. I think it is a common fallacy most humans around me seem to posses but seem largely unaware that it exists.
This age bias is at the heart of a lack of value placed on the young and many social expectations. It could even be a major factor in why population decline is happening in the west.
Someone wrote recently that academia is largely about forming good ideas at a young age, then spending decades trying to prove their merits and defend them. As a society we undervalue the best ideas of youth, we do not value youth or respect their autonomy and fundamental needs to thrive.
I find that funny, because I am only wearing a mask of age and am fully aware that I am still the same curious child at heart. I kept waiting for the day I would feel all growed up but that day never came, and I live my life blindly doing the best I can with the opportunities I have available.
