You've dampened your own delight and enthusiasm
You have learned to play it cool — to dampen your excitement, hide your enthusiasm, not seem too delighted or eager about anything, as though open enthusiasm were embarrassing or childish. You have muted your own capacity for delight to appear mature and unbothered, and in the process lost much of the bright, enthusiastic aliveness you once had.
Ah, you have learned to be cool — the great muffler of joy. Let a fool, who has never once been cool, talk you out of it. You learned to shrink your delight to seem mature — dampening your enthusiasm to not seem too eager, as though open delight were childish, and so lost much of its brightness, though you became not more mature but more muted, for the enthusiasm is still in you, held down. Unashamed enthusiasm is a form of aliveness, not immaturity — the one delighted and openly enthusiastic is more alive than the one too cool to care, and the studiously unimpressed are merely muted, mistaking indifference for depth. And let yourself be openly delighted again — enthuse without embarrassment, light up unashamedly, exposed as it feels at first, for each time the world does not mock you the old freedom returns, and your delight lifts others besides. It is one of the most alive things a person can be. What do you secretly delight in that you hide?
What changes unlock by starting
- You see you muted your delight to seem cool
- You reclaim enthusiasm as aliveness
- You let your delight show without shame
- You become openly, gloriously alive again