Discovering one’s shadow

There’s a video just below, documenting when a toddler “finds himself”

…well, he finds a playmate in his shadow.

I’ve had times that lonely as a kid, when my best play partner was my shadow. Then my brother came along…

At any rate, shadows are a fascinating study. Writing from the dark places, our shadows, is going to get its own post when I finish Joanna Penn’s Writing the Shadow. I am eager to read her take on this issue.

But all great art taps into darkness and your most compelling work emerges when you embrace your full humanity—both light and Shadow.

We all have to grapple with our shadows, whether it be in play, like this toddler, or in earnest soul searching. We need to find all parts of ourselves and embrace them. Like Wendy said, in Disney’s Peter Pan: “After all, one can’t leave his shadow lying about and not miss it sooner or later, don’t you agree?”

Learning about Shadows is learning about life.

Learning is magic. Nothing short of it.

I wish I could work in a daycare to watch moments like these happen all the time. I can remember some of the ah-ha moments my own kids had, 15 years back, and those moments are priceless.

One, for instance, was when Jax and I were on a walk in the woods. He was four. I slipped and fell down flat on my back. He waddled up and leaned over, looked me right in the face and said, “I didn’t know grown ups fell down.”

Animals have moments of insight, too, when they get astonished by simple things like an iced over water dish or a bumble bee’s buzz. I really love observing such things!

Language acquisition is incredible, too. Deb Roy, an MIT researcher, made a fascinating study of his own child in his own home. (It must be high impact, for I’ve remembered it now for over a dozen years!). Watch his TED talk on the subject, below.

This is going to earn it’s own tag in my blog series, I hope. I think I’ll call it MARVEL or DISCOVER…I’m finding this really fuels my curiosity and creativity. Reflecting on learning, revisiting epiphanies, observing all that in others…worth a blog post now and then.