I want maturity but I don't want to lose childlike wonder.

The eclipse helped us feel a sense of a wonder. It passed in a moment. But that moment was special. It's easy to see how most of human history experienced so much transcendence they could build religions around these moments.

The possibility for transcendence is always there.

I'm a sucker for a great quote. 

A fave that I have shared with you before, "But genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will — a childhood now equipped for self-expression with manhood’s capacities..." It's a French translation and I've seen some that read "with the skill of adulthood." Charles Baudelaire, French poet and jilter-of-my-brain ladies and gentlemen.

I like the way he frames that. I hope to live that. Recovering the childhood at will with the skill of adulthood is the highest and most whole of aims. 

The common path is to lose the childhood of play and wonder as you slowly become a rigid, uptight adult. There's a reason the Twenty One Pilots song "Stressed Out" got so much radio play. Statistically speaking your kids won't want the life you're currently living when they become adults. They dream about the future but they don't want the stresses that have been falsely equated with being an adult. They don't want to lose their wonder. 

We need to grieve our lost wonder.

I don't want to discourage you. I want to facilitate a wake up. The maturity that comes with adulthood is EMPOWERING. Learning who I am and how to let my emotions enhance my life and not dictate direction has been amazing. 

But I also need the child. I love being an adult with the curiosity of a child. Please hear me, I still screw up. I still succumb to the worst parts of who I am in moments. I either become childishly immature or an adult who's too serious and can't lighten up. But I've learned to interrupt my own dysfunctional patterns by embracing life with a childlike, eyes-wide-open, raging hope for what life can bring in the smallest of moments. (Cue me singing around the firepit late on Saturday nights at the top of my lungs. I love it!)  I want maturity with wonder. 

I don't want to miss any of my growth. I want to get to the edge of my abilities and go as far as I can. But I don't want to lose the child and be so serious in my pursuit of growth that I fail to enjoy the journey. I want to show up to each moment with a sense of, "How good can this get? I wonder what will happen next?"

I want to get where I want to go AND I want to enjoy getting there. This requires honesty about what I actually want my life to be about and the ability to embrace the inevitable setbacks and challenges.