Only Kids
Yesterday my son was in the bathroom and he said, "dad, why does with this light switch make popping sounds?" I came over to investigate. He had discovered that if he flipped the switch between "on" and "off" at just the right pace he'd hear a popping noise in the switch. He showed me his discovery. I could immediately smell some electrical burn in the switch. I had him stop and made sure the switch still worked when used in average-adult-mode. It was safe enough for the moment.
This morning I was taking a shower and I was thinking about that scene. Who else would have discovered that beside a kid? No adult is going to go into a bathroom and fiddle around with the limits of the light switch. Nah, realistically they're going to poop, veg out on their phone, wash their hands (hopefully), and walk out of the room. I'd personally been using the switch for a while and never knew it was hiding a potentially dangerous secret.
It was only discovered through real play. The kind of play that doesn't ask, "what's the return on investment of this play?" Nah, my son was just messing around and exploring the room he was in. What a wonderful state of being. And who knows, he may have prevented a future electrical fire in the process.
Kids are such vexing creatures. They push up against my rigid models of the world and invite me, if I'm willing, to revaluate everything around me. That's no small task. My kids have challenged me more than anything in my life. And they continue to do so. And they're not even trying. They just are in ways that ram against my forgotten ability to be.
I'm not suggesting that we adults replicate everything a child does. Children can be narcissistic. And that isn't a "bad" thing! They're evolutionarily wired to fight for their survival even at the expense of others. Real flourishing is a whole-bodied settling in to the infinite seam that runs through the middle of everything. The seam that's nestled between chaos and order, between childlike and grownup.
To be an adulkid (yep, my word) or not to be. That is the question.