The Peter Pan Complex

As some of my previous posts have alluded to, I have a really hard time letting go of more “childish things.” I love the bright colors and simplistic shapes of cartoons, I love the games on the backs of cereal boxes, I still eat pancakes with my hands (I swear the rip/dunk method provides the most precise pancake to syrup ratio), I still value many of my stuffed animals as thinking/talking friends, I mourned the day when the people at the dentist’s office stopped letting me pick out a toy, and I’ll never lose my fascination and awe over train sets and bubble wrap. In a lot of ways, I’ve always felt the pressure to give these things up and embrace the rationality and convention of adulthood. I’d hide my stuffed animals under my pillow in my dorm and I’d pick up my fork and knife to eat my pancakes when out to breakfast like a “normal” person. There’s just one problem, I’m not normal. None of us are really “normal.” We all look back on some of the crazy things we did as kids and laugh at our naivety without allowing ourselves to recognize that that kind of play was some of the most fun we’ve ever had. Letting go of childish things is necessary in many aspects of adult life, but in many ways it stifles the imagination and hinders creativity. When I was a kid I made up a game with my best friend where we collected different colored beads and took care of them like pets. I mean come on, what adult person do you know that would ever see a bead as anything other than a bead? I think we need to stop stigmatizing child-likeness in adults. Adults need to learn to play and dream and love like children and the only way they can do that is by allowing themselves to act like children from time to time. Peter Pan was way ahead of his time when he warned us of a time when we’d stop seeing the magic. However, I don’t think we have to stay young forever to do this, we just have to allow ourselves see the world they way we used to — boundless, wonderful, and full of possibilities.