Non-Serious
The child never dies in anyone. It is not that the child dies when you grow, the child remains.
Everything that you have been is still within you, and will remain within you until your very last breath.
But society is always afraid of non-serious people. Non-serious people will not be ambitious for money, or political power; they would rather enjoy existence. But enjoying existence cannot bring you prestige, cannot make you powerful, cannot fulfill your ego; and the whole world of man revolves around the idea of the ego. Playfulness is against your ego – you can try it and see. Just play with children, and you will find your ego is disappearing, you will find that you have become a child again.
It is not only true about you, it is true about everyone.
When Jesus was asked what kind of people will enter his kingdom of heaven, he replied, “Those who are like children.” Perhaps children do live in a kind of big heaven. We take their heaven away by schooling and tutoring them. But it is necessary that the paradise be taken away, because when it is found again the feeling is rare.
Very few people are able to regain this paradise, however. People generally live in the state of “paradise lost”; the situation of “paradise regained” comes in the lives of very few. We all lose our paradise, of course, but we never find it again. If one can become again like a child before his death, the paradise returns to him. If an old man can see the world with a child’s eye, the kind of peace, the kind of joy and bliss that will shower upon him is beyond comprehension.
So those who wish, will have to break their fixation with age. Once in a while hold a child’s hand and run along with him forgetting how old you are. And the funny thing is, that age exists just as a thought, a memory. It’s merely an idea which has taken hold of us very strongly.
