You can't be silly or playful anymore

So you have lost your silliness — come, a fool is exactly the right person to help you find it. The dignified adult is a costume, not your true skin — you decided being grown-up meant being always composed and wore the costume so long you mistook it for your skin, but beneath it the playful creature you were is still there, cramped and waiting, for silliness was a rule you absorbed, not a law of nature. Silliness needs safe company to come out — it is shy and will not perform for a hostile crowd, so find the friend who plays back, the child who invites it, and yours surfaces on its own. And risk one small foolishness and survive it — the silly voice, the little dance, the terrible joke, and yes you might look foolish, which is precisely the fear to walk through, for each time the sky does not fall the costume loosens. The fool in you is glad to see you. When did you last let yourself be ridiculous?