The boy in the bubble

After attending my 3rd funeral in the last 10 days, I now have a greater sense of my mortality. It isn’t that I have any warped sense of my earthly state, rather it is the discovery that the little boy that society tells each of us to abandon, for some mature, grown-up self, gets further and further suppressed.

The pursuit of the fountain of youth has always been a fixation for much of society. Health and fitness products, weight loss solutions and ab rollers dominate the shopping channels and magazine advertisements. And what are they selling? The chance to be young again. The ironic part is that we do not need any of these, we just need to change our state of mind.

The secret to life is to experience it. Life is for the living and as a wise man once stated in his 81st year, after returning from a 6-week motorcycle trip,  the reason for the trip was that “he was going to be dead for a long time.”  Brutally honest but straight to the heart of the matter. Someday has not made an appearance on the calendar yet.

As I thought about this, during my travels yesterday, I remembered the boy in the bubble movie that I saw as a kid. He could not leave because he had some rare condition and he could not be exposed`to others.  His greatest wish was to escape the confines of his plastic prison to experience life. It was at that point that I realized that each of us lives inside a bubble. Our plastic is our fears and insecurities.

When was the last time we ran barefoot through a field or walked through the middle of a deep puddle just because we can? The limitations that we place on ourselves are the handcuffs of life. They deprive us of the energy, creativity, and zest for discovery that radiates from our youngest inhabitants. There is a great verse in Matthew 18, that tells us that the kingdom of heaven awaits for those who become like children. 

Spend some time with some of these little gifts. They are not warped by a society of stress, technology, and power. They hold the secret to a life of abundance. Their only limits are what we place on them. Maybe they should take the reigns and run the world for a bit. It is not like we couldn’t use a fresh approach. Try talking to that child inside each of us. It would be a great place to start.