Thou hast killed the inner child...

Dost thou realize that thou hast killed the inner child?

I had this fantastic dream when I was younger of marrying some British royal, be it Prince or Lord or really anything, and moving to Britain, living in some small mansion with a wolfhound laying next to the fireplace and writing in the land of Faeries...

Sounds quite unrealistic doesn't it?

But isn't that the beauty of dreaming? To dream of something so out there and wondrous that your heart leaps for joy at the very thought of something so spectacular. Something out of a fairytale, out of some movie. Something out of the ordinary that makes you smile and think you have something to look forward to, to work towards.

And yet...

I feel like so often as we grow into adulthood and the inner child get's stomped out of us. We are told that we are too old to keep having foolish, childish fantasies. That we have unrealistic views of life. That life isn't always happy and grand and it doesn't always work out for the good.

Then why live? Why dream at all? If we are so encouraged to dream big, why do they get crushed when we arrive at that moment where we might be able to finally reach those goals.

I wanted to be a spy. I wanted to live on a thousand acres ranch. I wanted to dance in New York City. I realized on my own that these may be unrealistic, that they may be impossible, that they might be unreachable. But, isn't that the point of big dreams? To push us to reach higher and seek things that seem impossible? To not settle? Isn't that exactly what all the great artists, inventors, and great people we know did? They dreamed the impossible, and achieved the impossible.

Why then do we work so hard to kill the inner child? To destroy the part that allows us to have imagination, to dream, to create? Shouldn't we help to build our children's dreams into something fantastic and amazing and perhaps a bit crazy? We don't need to encourage children to try to be a dinosaur, but shouldn't we try to help them build and advance towards dreams that could be a reality?

Yes, they may fail, they may get hurt. But isn't it better to be there with them saying, "I know THAT dream didn't work out the way you planned, but God has many more in store for you. Let's build a new dream, or tweak this one. Keep dreaming the impossible"?

Dost thou realize that thou hast killed the inner child? Dost though know that thou hast tried to kill the dream of impossibility?