Spheres

Imagine a world in which you never grow older - in which you can be child forever. This is Neverland. I've just finished watching the fine film 'Finding Neverland'. It certainly is thought provoking stuff. One of the concepts I was most surprised to find borne out in the movie was the idea that being a child was good and wonderful and something to be treasured - but at the same time 'growing up' when done at the right time and for the right reasons is glorious too. James Barrie (played superbly by Johnny Depp) displays little evidence of having grown up, (in a deleted scene when a boy asks why he doesn't have children, James explains that you have to be an adult to have children) he does applaud and encourage the boys he loves to make the passage to manhood.
There seem to be largely two schools of thought (or action) concerning this: one is that people should retain the irresponsibility and self-centeredness (they wouldn't put it this way, of course) of childhood well into their adult life; sometimes till death. The other is that children are stunted humans who have to be fed strong food and complicated ideology to 'unstunt' them as quickly as possible, so that they can fit into 'mature' society. Both ideas are killing us.
Children seem, in a sense, to be sphere shaped - they encompass the world on all sides and interact with it on many planes. Adults (by and large) are either trying to hang on to that small spherical shape (because it's comfortable, or they're afraid, or . . .) or stretch themselves out so they seem taller, but in reality they're whittling down the variety of world that they can see. What else can we do? My humble suggestion: remain a sphere - but get larger. We weren't meant to live child sized all our lives, but we were designed to live child shaped.
Blessed are the child-shaped, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven . . .