I had a delightful day yesterday .... and one that made me wonder.  Babysitting my little nieces aged 4 and almost-6. Amidst chocolate coated fingers, and song and colour, and cacaphony and babble .... i soon started wondering for how long we would connect at this spontaneous and unabandoned level.  We got down to doing some 'serious' colouring ... here's a little exchange we had :

A (the almost-6 year old) : look Dina ... i've drawn a sea

R (the 4 yr old) : me too, me too   

A : (laughs out loud) R ... you are wrong .. the sea cannot be red in colour

R : (looks a bit puzzled) why ? i like red

A : teacher told me the sea has to be blue ... so it has to be blue 

Which made me wonder .... at what moment are we supposed to give up our childish things for the mantle of adulthood? What happens to the parts of us that remain capable of play? Why do we lose our spontaneity? When did we stop rolling down hills? 

All of us ... adults and children seem to be forgetting our 'free child' - and this can stifle creativity beyond imagination.   Reflected in our relationships, our view of the world, our own self-perception and individuation, and even at our workplace in our interactions and corporate and brand visioning and decision-making.  

Carl Jung called it the 'Divine Child', and in his work on the Collective Unconscious and Archetypes, speaks of the Child Archetype :  

"Also takes many forms--child, god, dwarf, hobbits, elf, animals--monkey--or objects: jewels, chalices or the golden ball (trickster like). It represents original or child like conditions in the life of the individual or the species, and thus reminds the conscious mind of its origins and helps to keep them continuous. A necessary reminder when the consciousness become too one sided, too willfully progressive in a manner that threatens the sever the individual from the roots of his or her being. It also signifies the potentiality of future personality development, it anticipates the synthesis of opposites and the attainment of wholeness. Thus it is said to represent the urge and compulsion towards self-realization. This is a reason that so many of the mythical saviour gods are childlike in their nature."

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