Love It Like A Little Kid

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I’ve met a couple of young children in the past couple weeks (some family friends, some coming to shows, some just at the grocery store that I follow around for a few isles before their parents give me looks), and after spending enough time around them, and comparing myself to them (which I realize is a weird impulse), I came to a sad realization:

I don’t love anything the way they love everything.

For instance, I watched one of them just go nuts with this balloon. From the minute he found it, he was completely in love with the balloon. Nothing could tear away his attention. Any cares he had prior to the balloon (probably not many, to be fair), were completely washed away. You could have offered him a magical ride on a golden carpet made of french fries, and he probably still would have chosen to stay there and just mess around with this balloon.

Nowadays, even when I find something that makes me feel the way that I think that balloon probably made him feel (Michigan football, steak sandwiches, Fall weather, new Drake songs, etc), I can’t love it like that. I can’t have that same reaction. I’m happy, but not little-kid-with-a-balloon-or-a-puppy-or-the-thought-of-ice-cream-happy. I’m happy, but I’m distracted.

Here’s the difference: kid happiness blinds you to everything else. Modern happiness (for me, at least) just feels like a temporary break from my permanent march toward something else: obligations, sleep, death? Kid love is everything, modern love is just…something.

So, now fully self-aware of that shortcoming, I’ve started trying something. Now, when something that I love happens, I try to fully immerse myself in it. I try not to think about it as temporary: it’s what I’m doing so it’s everything that I am.

And it didn’t really work with the Michigan game on Saturday or the steak sandwich I bought at Subway the other day. It didn’t really work with anything until I tried it on stage the other night. I was performing, a job that I love, and I let myself just do that. I tried not to worry about how much water I was drinking, my posture, my banter, where I was placing the sound when I was singing, how I was holding the microphone, and I just let myself be right exactly where I was.

And, as the kid and his balloon would confirm, it worked! Before I knew it, I wasn’t thinking about any of those things. In fact, I wasn’t thinking about anything. I was just letting myself do nothing but love what I was doing. And all of my worldly concerned and long-term fears were gone.  I never understood that “in that moment, I felt infinite” line from Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I got it then, and I think that the key, at least for me, to getting it, was thinking about that little kid with the balloon.

My conclusion was this: if you let yourself love the things you love SO MUCH that for a temporary period of time forget that it’s a temporary period of time, you’ll love it exactly like you’re supposed to: like a little kid.

-Paradise Fears

They opened for Parachute and were sososo nerd-tastically cute, but I just really loved this post.