Embracing the Peter Pan Within
Rediscovering Wonder and Magic in the Midst of Growing Up
There comes a point in childhood when someone begins telling us what isn't real. Fairies aren't real. Dragons aren't real.
You cannot talk to animals. Trees don't have personalities. Clouds aren't castles. Blankets aren't forts. And you certainly cannot fly.
Eventually, most of us learn the rules. We grow up. We become practical. Responsible. Busy. We acquire calendars, bills, passwords, grocery lists, and appointments. We stop checking beneath mushrooms for tiny doors.
We stop looking quite so carefully into the forest. And somewhere along the way, many of us stop believing in magic.
I wonder sometimes whether growing up requires quite as much giving up as we've been led to believe.
Perhaps Peter Pan Had Part of It Right
Peter Pan has become a symbol of the person who refuses to grow up. And certainly, adulthood requires responsibility.
We have obligations. People depend upon us. Bills really do have to be paid, regardless of whether we believe in fairies.
But perhaps there is another way to understand Peter Pan. Maybe the lesson isn't that we should refuse adulthood.
Maybe it's that we shouldn't surrender wonder to become adults.
There is a difference between being childish and remaining connected to the childlike parts of ourselves.
- Curiosity.
- Play.
- Imagination.
- Awe.
- Creativity.
- The ability to encounter something ordinary and wonder whether it might contain something extraordinary.
Those qualities don't make us immature. They make us human.
When Did We Stop Looking for Magic?
Ask a child to describe a stick she found outside, and you may discover that it isn't a stick at all.
It's a wand. A sword. A dragon's walking staff. A bridge for tiny woodland creatures.
Give a child a cardboard box, and you've provided a spaceship, castle, cave, boat, or secret hideaway.
Children don't always require elaborate materials to create worlds.
They require imagination.
Somewhere during adulthood, however, we begin requiring evidence before allowing ourselves to wonder.
- We see the stick.
- We see the box.
- We see the tree.
Children sometimes see what something could become. Perhaps that ability deserves protecting.
Wonder Is Not the Same as Ignorance
Believing in magic doesn't require abandoning reality. We can understand science and still stand beneath a night sky completely awestruck. We can understand how rainbows form and still stop what we're doing when one appears.
We can understand the biology of a butterfly and still experience something extraordinary when one lands beside us.
Knowledge doesn't have to destroy wonder. Sometimes knowledge makes the world even more astonishing.
A seed becomes a tree. A caterpillar reorganizes itself into a butterfly.
Tiny lights from stars cross unimaginable distances before reaching our eyes. Human beings dream things that don't exist and then build them. If those things don't qualify as some form of magic, perhaps we've made our definition of magic far too small.
Creativity Is One Way We Find Our Way Back
Artists know something children know instinctively: Reality is only the beginning. A painter can take an empty canvas and create a world. A writer can arrange marks on a page and make someone cry over people who never existed. A musician can create a melody that transports someone decades into their past. A puppeteer can place a creature on their hand and, somehow, everyone in the room begins relating to the creature as though it were alive. That is extraordinary.
Creativity gives us permission to cross the boundary between what is and what could be.
And sometimes that is exactly where we rediscover wonder.
Invite the Child Back Out
We spend a great deal of time talking about healing the wounded child within us. That matters.
But I think there is another child waiting for us too. The playful one. The ridiculous one.
The child who makes mud pies. Talks to stuffed animals. Dances badly. Invents stories.
Builds forts. Names rocks. Wears something completely inappropriate because it makes her feel magnificent.
And believes-with absolute certainty-that something magical might be living behind the tree.
Maybe she doesn't need healing today.
Maybe she just wants someone to come outside and play.
What if we occasionally let her?
You Don't Have to Believe in Dragons
Although, personally, I think life is considerably more interesting when you leave the possibility open.
You don't have to believe that dragons live beyond the mountains. You don't have to believe that tiny creatures dance beneath mushrooms after everyone has gone to sleep. You don't have to believe raindrops carry messages or that old trees remember the people who once sat beneath them. But perhaps you could pretend for five minutes. Then ten. Then long enough to remember how it feels when imagination gets to lead. That is how a magical world began growing in my own imagination. There were dragons.
Not terrifying dragons guarding piles of gold. These were whimsical creatures. Curious creatures. Little dragons who could make mistakes. Dragons who could laugh. Dragons who could sneeze raindrops. And, of course, a Grandmother Dragon who seemed to know exactly how everything should unfold. Eventually, that world found a name:
Dragon Dreams and Raindrops.
But before it became a story, it was simply play. An invitation from imagination.
Come see what's over here.
So I followed.
Perhaps Magic Has Been Waiting for Us
Maybe we don't lose imagination when we become adults. Maybe we simply stop visiting it. Life gets loud. Responsibilities multiply.
Hard things happen. Some of us spend years surviving circumstances that leave very little room for play. And yet imagination waits.
Creativity waits. Wonder waits. The child who once believed anything was possible may still be somewhere inside us, whispering:
Come look.
Maybe that is why stories matter at every age. They remind us that another world can exist beside this one. Not instead of reality.
Alongside it. A place we can visit. A place where imagination stretches. A place where children and adults can meet each other without anyone having to explain why dragons are perfectly reasonable companions.
Leave a Little Room for Neverland
Growing older is inevitable. Growing completely out of wonder doesn't have to be. Pay the bills. Keep the appointments.
Do the laundry. Be responsible.
And then occasionally do something gloriously unnecessary. Paint. Dance. Make something. Talk to the plants.
Build the fort with your grandchildren-and crawl inside it too. Look for shapes in clouds.
Give the squirrel in your backyard a name. Read the children's book even when no children are around.
And when you walk past the edge of the woods, look twice. Because maybe there isn't a dragon behind that tree.
Probably. But wouldn't it be wonderful if there were?
Perhaps Peter Pan wasn't asking us never to grow up.
Perhaps he was reminding us:
