Let yourself go by the child you once were*

Let yourself go by the child you once were. An advice from the king Dom Duarte, that I read in a José Saramago’s book.

June starts celebrating the World Children’s day.

If I let myself go by the child I once was, and if I surrender myself to the child that still lives within me, I’m sure that I’ll be better prepared to reverence myself to the children that surround me.

            That’s the meaning of the June first. To reminds us that it is fundamental to unconditionally love each little boy and little girl. Be him or her more or less close to us.

If I forget myself... If I forget the adult personality in which I turned to...I'll have the space to offer to the little girl that I still am and that I still want to be. If this happens, I’ll be able to play with the other children. Only then I’ll understand how to provide them the indispensable space they need, and they are entitled to. The space to be and to continue being the children they are as long as they are children.

If the children can still be children, they will be able to keep on dazzling themselves: one of the most beautiful abilities of human existence. Being amazed with a drop of rain, with a fluttering butterfly, with every rainbow, with each ray of sun touching the skin, with each bite of chocolate cake, with every leap into the unknown…

Let yourself go by the child you once were and notice and let yourself be in each moment. Don’t lose yourself with comparisons and assumptions. Only then you’ll not lose yourself in that past that no longer exists. Only this way you’ll not lose yourself in such an unpredictable future.

There’s only one thing that the child who dwells in me aspires: playing here, playing here for just another minute, just one more time, the last one, the last of the last… even if she is crying of sleep. This is just because there’s no child to whom time is understandable. In fact, there’s no child who can catch up this anthropological coordinate. It does not exist. Every single child lives at the present time. Only now exists.

Oh… I wish I could be that child who stayed there… ah… and then I take a deep breath, trying to forget all those grownups that surround me. Instead, I reach for my beloved nephew Rodi. For this three years old child there’s nothing else than this moment. Tomorrow is an enigma that he not even wants to understand. So, we run after the ball and score just one more goal. So, we run and hid behind the coach just once more. And jump the wall just once more.

Even if, from time to time, the memory trips me and shoots an image of a jump that went bad and made me break a tooth, and almost the nose. And again shoots another image of me going bleeding to the hospital. And? I was playing. And I was playing with other boys and girls in the street. And we were running and jumping and hiding and showing up running and jumping. And if I was the last one, I’d run even more and even faster and I’d touch the wall and I’d shout out loud: 1,2, 3 ana saves every one.

Till the moment that moms would notice the stars in the sky and would call those still playing in the street. Fearless of darkness. Fearless of nothing.

Children are born without fear.

Fear starts with the adults. In their fear of losing their children, adults inculcate them their own fears. And that’s when the monsters, policeman and the big bogeyman show up...

            Even today, even under a torrid sky, I must cover my feet while I sleep. Who knows if the beast underneath my bed comes and eats my feet...

Let yourself go by the child you once were and forget about yourself…

PS: To José Saramago’s memory, who died on June 18, 2010

 *To celebrate World Children’s day.