A SYMPHONY OF DELIGHT ~ One of my childhood dreams come true…

 ~ Posted 20 June 2016 ~

Two of my dearest Logotherapy friends, Dana and Mary-Anne came a long way just to visit me on Saturday (I trained with both… way back in the day)… We had such a wonderful time together and I enjoyed our friendship and laughter as always. 

Mary-Anne recently read a comment I made on one of my friends posts which showed a little fairy house someone had made, so she arrived on Saturday with this most beautiful surprise ever… a little fairy house that her dad and partner had made especially for me. 

Made out of wood and stones, with flowering trees and bushes and green grass… and four little fairies that actually flap their wings and three little bees and all the colours of the rainbow. Inside the little house there is even row of tiny fairy lights that come on when a battery is attached.  I could barely wait for it to get dark so I could switch them on… how positively beautiful!!! The night never took so long to come, hahahaa!  Later, I delighted in how the light shone through the windows onto my wall and out of the little door illuminating the fairy's path…
 
“Patty” (my inner child) was of course in her absolute element… totally delighted and happy inside… one of her childhood dream fantasies had at last come true…
 
I can’t wait to show my grandchildren later today… they are going to love it! PURE JOY!
 
I wrote the quote above especially for Mary-Anne, to thank her for her beautiful gift.
 
I am so grateful that I had the mind as a parent to allow my children to enjoy playing in the mud, and I think that my love of gardening is as close as I’ve come to doing the same now in my adulthood.  I enjoy digging in the dirt with my hands and feel completely satisfied while I’m scrubbing the mud and grit out from my fingernails after my time in the garden… this is one area of self-healing that I enjoy very much.  My mother loved gardening also, and I learnt that from her and I’m grateful for that blessing in my life.  Perhaps for both of us, this was a way for our inner-child to come out and play… in an adult sort of way.

Playing in the mud, my two youngest children with their neighborhood friend Avalon… behind you will see our vegetable garden which we enjoyed working in very much.

A picture of me covered in Dead Sea mud on my visit to Israel in 2012… I was laughing as much inside as I was on the outside… what fun!  (Due to emotional healing which has resulted in better dietary choices, I’ve lost almost 35kg’s since that picture was taken and will need to buy a new swimming costume before summer, or take the old one in all over! I already need new clothes because most of my old ones look like sacks on me now)  I feel healthier, freer and happier than ever right now in my 59th year (I’ll be turning 60 in November).
 
My message:  Just think about the things we “don’t do” now that we are adults and possibly could still do and maybe even should do.  Some childhood dreams should never be allowed to (DIE) disappear into the often humdrum existence of adulthood.
 
~ Pana
 
Quotes and Links I found interesting on the subject of “childhood dreams”:
 
“For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be” ~ John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things
 
“Don't you find it odd," she continued, "that when you're a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you're older, somehow they act offended if you even try” ~ Ethan Hawke, The Hottest State
 
“I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias” ~ Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter
 
“I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup” ~ Madeleine L'Engle
 
“Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
 
“Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?” ~ Richard Paul Evans, The Christmas Box Miracle: My Spiritual Journey of Destiny, Healing and Hope 
 
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/childhood-dreams-that-are-attainable-now/ 
 
http://everydaybright.com/2011/05/24/interpreting-your-childhood-dreams/