Who the Inner Child Really Is, And Why you Should Start Listening to Them

…there are reveries so deep, reveries which help us descend so deeply within ourselves that they rid us of our history. They liberate us from our name. These solitudes of today return to the original solitudes. Those original solitudes, the childhood solitudes, leave indelible marks on certain souls. Their entire life is sensitized for poetic reverie which knows the price of solitude. Childhood knows unhappiness through men. In solitude, it can relax its aches. When the human world leaves him in peace, the child feels like a son of the cosmos. And thus, in his solitudes, from the moment he is master of his reveries, the child knows the happiness of dreaming which will later be the happiness of poets.”

- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie

Children naturally dream and create freely, and they do so without shame. They use their imaginations to shape their realities to the best of their ability. When a child is playing “make believe”, they are not ashamed that their rocket ship looks rather like a cardboard box covered with scribbley crayon. And of course they know that in our reality it is ultimately just a box, but this is way beside the point. In their minds it is a beautiful, fully functioning rocket ship, and they are enjoying the ride.

Similarly, when a young child paints, draws, or makes something out of playdough, they do it with that same lack of judgement. Their attention is fully on their imagination, and on manifesting that imagination to the best of their ability. They fully accept and enjoy everything that they create, and perfection is the farthest from their minds. The fact that the castle they drew perhaps also resembles an old shoe is, again, besides the point. The whole point for them is in the experience of imagining and creating, not how closely it resembles what’s in their minds. Children really only start to feel shame around their creations when they realize the ideals and expectations that are placed on them.

This is, in fact, where creativity and imagination became stifled in all of us. This is what is fundamentally wrong with the world at large (and especially the art world). The problem is that we stop following the innate creative wisdom inside of us, and start believing what those in power (parents, teachers, other adults, politicians, scientists, religious leaders, etc.) tell us to be true. We start to follow their examples and guidance of how “a valued member of society” should act and look.

All hope is not lost, however. The child in us may be stifled and/or traumatized, but they are not gone. Our child selves stay with us for our entire lives. You can think of your inner child not as a past version of yourself that now lives in your memories, but as an eternal part of you that never changes. The inner child is who we are underneath all of the conditioning… all of the standards and ideals. It is the essence of who we really are: how we would dream, live, and create, if it were not for the limits and shaming that we have faced. The thing is, that for most of us adults, the majority of the limiting and shaming now actually come from within. We have internalized the shaming that we saw in the world, and made that part of who we became. Most of us falsely believe that our lives have taught us how to be the supreme judge of everything, and so we shame both others and ourselves relentlessly.

This shaming is, in my opinion, what is at the core of the large-scale pain and suffering of the world. Every single person on the planet can benefit from breaking down these personal barriers of ideals and shame that are stopping ourselves (and those around us) from pursuing the colorful, explorative, blossoming lives that we dreamed of as young children.

There is one catch, however. The truth is that many people in the world would indeed be shunned, to one degree or another, if they truly chose to express all of what they are at their core. It is a sad reality that most people in the world do not have either the financial freedom, or cultural freedom, to fully embody who they would like to be. Yet, I think it is the deconditioning, the getting in touch with who we really are, not necessarily the complete outward expression of it, that is the most important. From there, at least, our mind and soul can feel more connected and at ease. From there we can start to live a bit more sincerely in the ways that our lives will allow us. I believe this, along with mutual aid, solidarity, and respect for differences, is how the worldwide revolution will grow.

And in this revolution (which is first personal and then communal) we will find freedom of expression, harmony, and beauty. The child finds pure wonder not only in their own imagination and creations, but also in the creations of the world around them. In The Poetics of Reverie, Bachelard also writes:

“The child sees everything big and beautiful. The reverie towards childhood returns us to the beauty of the first images.”

When we begin to embody our inner child, we start to see each moment like we did when we were young: as new and raw and full of life. And from there do not judge. We only wonder.