Thursday, January 28, 2016

Finding My Inner Peter Pan





This video is joyful, exuberant and playful, and so full of enthusiasm for life that it makes me want to burst at the seams just watching it.  Yes, it is two actors in a mini-film of their own making.  Yes, there may be a bit of self-marketing involved in their levels of joy and wonderment.  Yes, I am a sucker for a sappy, gloriously amusing romp in the wilds of Africa, a continent that I have yet to visit anywhere other than in the pages of travel books or watching "Out of Africa."

But there is something genuinely sweet and sincere about a lot of this.  It makes me smile.

It also makes me wonder where my inner Peter Pan has gone.  Because it has been a while since this sort of wonder and joy has taken over for me.  

I have gotten glimpses of this several times the last few years:  climbing to the top of the gypsum dunes in White Sands National Monument or getting up before dawn just to see the sunrise about the Grand Canyon's majestic rim, and then walking along the rim of the Grand Canyon with The Peanut, no other human being around us for a half an hour or more.  (Best cross-country driving trip ever, and still paying off in happy dividends just remembering it.)

But to utterly and completely let loose?  Somehow, I have lost the ability to do that.


I think that I used to have it.  Somewhere in the dim recesses of my memory, I can recall being a bit more free and easy in my younger days.  At least, I'd like to think that I was.

But it has been a long, long while since I've just utterly and completely let go all of my control and decorum and let myself be hurled into the maelstrom.  Why is that, do you think?  How do I recapture a bit more of my inner Peter Pan?

That's what I am pondering today:  more unfettered joy, less cautious reserve.

Thoughts?

1 comment:

Carolyn said...

If you find out, let me know.