small it may be to make a difference and affect change with energy and passion? How we might live! How we might teach! How we might see the child's world in a whole new light!
 The magic of play is something that you can’t un-see. Once you’ve seen just what a powerful component it is in child development then you can never go back. True play is a hybrid of collaboration, creativity, imagination and interpretation beyond anything that an adult could hope to plan for in its worn out call for “children will...” planning sheets.
Children’s playfulness lies outside of the Adult World. A child’s ‘story’ comes from the heartfelt and from the wildness of imagination. Yet as adults we have detached from this. For some reason we feel the need to grasp the child’s world with the cold hands of control, analysis and domination. We seem unable to come to our senses and actually step into their world. Children offer us a passport into their magical realm day in, day out yet we remain steadfast in our intent to ‘teach’, to lend our voice, our crooked dream.  Once upon a time there was a little boy whose head was full of daydreams and wonder. Deep within his very core he had a song. A beautiful song, one which the birds of the air themselves would envy. It was a song of joy, of energy and of delight.
Day in, day out the little boy would sing this song, to himself and the people around him. He would sing loud, he would sing soft, a lullaby of laughter like a babbling brook, dancing and rushing to meet the wide, wide ocean. He sang and he sang, he sang and he sang. Other children would hear his song and join in, combining voices, creating a sea of sunlit-sparkled melody. Voice upon voice, flowing together til the little boy’s song led a mighty crescendo-roar, each child around him lending their voice, layer upon layer...  If you knew something magic that could change someone else's life for the better would you share it with them or would you keep it to yourself? Would you let it slowly burn inside you hidden away or would you, with great haste, go and tell that someone straight away? I'd like to think that we'd definitely share it and that we'd accept it would be wrong to keep it to ourselves.
You might not think that you have something magic to share but you do. The problem is that before you can share it you have to find it! You probably don't necessarily know that it's even there to be found, but believe me it is. The reason that you may not be able to find it is that you live a life in which there is a clamour of voices and distractions and problems and bills and family and relationships and self-image and on and on that drown out the knowledge of the magic that is whispering away inside of you. |
