Every year when Children’s Day comes around, we automatically think it’s for the kids. Schools plan games, teachers get creative with balloons and goodie bags, and parents scramble to find small surprises. But what if I told you that Children’s Day isn’t really for the children? It’s for us — the so-called adults who have long forgotten what it feels like to be silly, curious, and utterly unproductive for the sheer joy of it.
Because honestly, somewhere between learning to pay bills, managing work emails, and figuring out how to cook chicken that isn’t dry, we’ve lost something precious. We’ve become serious. Too serious. We live like we’re always trying to meet invisible deadlines, and somewhere along the way, we’ve all been slightly zombified — alive, but not truly living.
The Grown-Up Illusion
We wear our seriousness like a badge of honour. “I’m so busy,” we say, as though it’s a competition. We chase promotions, upgrades, and achievements, but the more we chase, the more sterile our minds become. We start to forget how to play — and that’s dangerous.
See, a child’s mind is messy. It’s full of absurd ideas, wild imaginations, and stories that make no logical sense. But it’s also where creativity lives. When you tell a child that a dragon can live in an HDB block or that clouds are actually sky marshmallows, they’ll nod and add, “And maybe the marshmallows taste different every day.” They don’t question the impossible — they build upon it.
Adults, though? We’d say, “That doesn’t make sense.”
Exactly. That’s the problem.
A Reminder from the Folktales
In a Southeast Asian folktale from the Philippines, there’s a story about a man named Juan Tamad — “Lazy Juan.” Juan was known for lying under the mango tree waiting for the mango to fall into his mouth instead of picking it himself. To many adults, Juan was foolish, even useless. But in some retellings, Juan wasn’t lazy — he was simply content. He didn’t rush through life; he enjoyed its small absurdities.
If we think about it, Juan Tamad wasn’t wrong. In our rush to “become someone,” we sometimes forget to just be. Maybe that’s what the folktale was trying to tell us — that when we take life too seriously, we shorten our experience of it. We cheat ourselves of laughter, of silliness, of the mango juice dripping down our chin because we wanted to look proper eating it.
Being Young Again (Without Looking Like We’re Trying Too Hard)
So maybe Children’s Day isn’t about giving children gifts — maybe it’s about giving ourselves permission.
Permission to play.
Permission to fail spectacularly.
Permission to laugh at our own mistakes without feeling embarrassed.
Staying in touch with your inner child doesn’t mean acting childish; it means remembering what it felt like before you were afraid of looking stupid. It means sketching a silly doodle on your meeting notes. It means dancing in your kitchen when your favourite song plays. It means seeing the world again as something strange and exciting, not as a list of errands.
Sure, adulthood has bills, commitments, and responsibilities. But why can’t it also have games, jokes, and imagination? Why can’t we bring a little play into our work, a little laughter into our chores? Maybe that’s the secret — not to run from adulthood, but to sprinkle it with the spirit of childhood so we never fully lose ourselves.
A Final Thought
Children’s Day, then, is a day of remembering — not just for the kids, but for the adults who once were. The ones who used to dream about being pirates, astronauts, or magical beings, before the alarm clocks and email reminders came along.
So here’s my little reminder to you (and to myself):
Play a little. Be silly. Draw outside the lines. Life is already serious enough — no need for us to make it dull too.
Because maybe, just maybe, the secret to staying young… is never forgetting that we were children once, and that the world is still just as magical as we imagined it to be.
Written by: Adi Jamaludin
0 comments:
Post a Comment