The Real Fountain of Youth: My Inner Child
My favorite TV show as a kid was Sailor Moon. My friend had all the episodes on DVD, and I would watch it at her house. At one point, her mom forbade us from seeing it. Apparently, spinning around in a circle while having nails and lashes put on as you get ready to fight crime in a slutty uniform is inappropriate kid content.
When you’re a little kid, the line between reality and imagination doesn’t exist. The Little Prince (from the book “The Little Prince”) wanted the narrator to draw him a sheep. He was unsatisfied with the drawings until the narrator gave up and drew a box as a final straw. “This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside,” the narrator explained. The Little Prince was delighted. “That is exactly the way I wanted it! Do you think that this sheep will have to have a great deal of grass?” the Little Prince asked. “There will surely be enough grass for him,” the narrator assured the Little Prince, “It is a very small sheep that I have given you.” Only little kids can perceive what the eyes can’t see.
As grown-ups, we’re told by neuroscientists that your brain doesn’t know the difference between thinking about a situation and the actual situation, which is why you have basketball players visualizing their free throws as part of their training. The brain generates reality more than it perceives it. There are vastly more nerves feeding information from the brain into the retina than the other way around. Beliefs are a powerful indicator of success. Make-believe, or imaginative play, has the same transformative powers as visualization, hypnosis, and affirmations—because it comprises all of the above.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been exploring the topic of aging. Children are an unbridled expression of joy, yet procedures like Botox impede that exact process. Whenever I’ve encountered someone who looked much older than they were, it was never because they had wrinkles or gray hair or any of the typical signs of aging.
“The eyes, chico. They never lie.”
I once mistakenly asked a guy I had just met if he was retired. He got extremely offended. “Do I look that old?” he asked. I knew I had come up with an answer quickly, so I engaged all my brain cells in formulating the perfect response. It didn’t matter; the damage had already been done. Since then, I’ve been distrustful of people who try to play the “Guess How Old I Am” game because who even cares how old they appear to other people except for people over the age of 40. Whenever I’ve played that game, it has been a lose-lose situation for all parties involved.
I know what you’re thinking. Silly Angela—you’re not supposed to say the real answer; you’re supposed to make up a lie that makes them feel good. No kidding. I lie every time. It’s still not enough.
I can’t even take it as a compliment anymore when people say that I look younger because I assume they’re lying to me because everyone knows you’re supposed to tell a woman she looks ten years younger than she is after she tells you her age. However, I believe our brains control the aging process way more than our bodies do. In the book “The Expectation Effect” by David Robson, he writes, “Before you walk into a room, your brain has already built many simulations of what might be there,” and “the brain’s confidence in its predictions may be so strong that it chooses to discount some signals while accentuating others.” If I believe that a piece of fish contains mercury, I’m more likely to feel sick after eating it. This is why, to this day, I refuse to read the ingredient label of Sour Patch Kids.
We don’t stop being kids because we get old; we get old because we stop being kids. God doesn’t care what we do as long as we have fun. I don’t wear sunscreen, and I eat pizza 4 to 5 times a week, but I make room for activities that spark joy. For instance, today, I went to a book fair, and I will have my weekly book club meeting soon. After that, I will sleep like a baby (hopefully, the mosquito in my room will do the same).
