You've lost your childlike sense of play

You have lost your childlike spirit — misplaced it under a pile of sensibleness, more like. The child you were is not gone, only overruled — told to sit down and be sensible, waiting quietly for someone to let them back up, and they still live in you with their wonder and easy joy, needing only your permission. Childlike is not childish, and you have confused them — childish is the immaturity we rightly outgrow, but childlike is wonder, playfulness, delight, the parts we tragically abandon when we need not, and you can be fully mature and deeply childlike at once, which the wisest often are. And do the things children do, and feel it return — splash in the puddle, watch the clouds, build the thing, ask the wondering question, done a little self-consciously at first, for the childlike comes back through play itself, done for no reason and gloriously without dignity. What did the child you were love most?