Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I’d like to find your inner child and kick it’s little ass
Now, what’s interesting about this is that when they did their Hell Freezes Over tour, they literally, in my understanding, had to pay someone to pass notes and messages between them, as they refused to speak face to face to one another, their terrific harmonies on stage notwithstanding. (note to self: needed a few, more, commas, in that sentence).
As I grow older though, and I think get more perspective on my own emotions, it seems to me that this concept of the inner child has some merit. On occasion, I get deep enough within my own self that I feel as though I am lying underneath my emotional self, separate from it, and that I can feel it, see it, process it, as it is. And frankly in most respects I am not the sort of person I would want to be. There is ugliness in me that I hate to see, but must admit.
It is truly astonishing how deep and pervasive and long lived illusions about your self can be. We think we are one sort of person, and can live out a life, easily, without ever grasping who and how we really are.
The value of the “inner child” idea is this: it is a place holder for the notion that at some point in our lives we stop–or never begin–processing emotion honestly, directly, spontaneously. We equate our selves with how the world sees us, or how we feel we must be seen by the world. We equate ourselves with goals and accomplishments that are compulsive, the energy for accomplishing which does not arise from our selves, but from other people, from persuasion, from illusion.
To win is not the best end to strive for. To accomplish, or to experience quantitatively (I saw 42 world landmarks last year, and visited 27 countries) is not the best end. Checking off lists is not the best end.
What to me seems worthwhile is the learned capacity to feel deeply, and in particular to feel spontaneous positive feelings deeply, and in response to normal, routine stimuli, like cool days, warm days, cloudy days, clear days, rainy days, sunny days, around pleasant people, and around challenging people. It is far easier to make your world interesting than to seek out an interesting world. You have far less competition, too.
Most people stop feeling at some point. I don’t know why this is, if it is a peculiarly modern thing, or if it dates back to the earliest moments of culture. As I have often remarked, it is interesting how many songs talk about losing the ability to feel. As one example, Lady Antebellum’s “Need you now”: “Yes Id rather hurt than feel nothing at all.”
One can accurately, I think, look at all the death metal, speed metal, Marilyn Manson, punk rock, etc. as expressions of a need to feel something while in the throes of an emotional apocalypse. It is so hard to see what is not there, which in this case is the capacity for the expression of innocent, constructive, meaningful, satisfying emotions.
You cannot blame your childhood for adult dysfunction. You must force yourself to do your job. At the same time, I think a life lived without down time, without leisure, lounging time, is almost necessarily going to be wasted. That is when you re-create yourself.
Thus, this idea of the inner child is not an excuse, but it is rather an opportunity to look back, to realize that you lost something useful, something valuable along the way. The concept is not a regression into helplessness and irresponsibility, but rather what for most people will be an advancement into the ADULT expression of primary, honest emotions.
Hopefully that makes sense to someone.