Hours pass like minutes
“What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes?”
I borrowed this from Austin Kleon’s substack, where he mused on bicycling, etc. Karl Jung's question helps us drill down and find those things again. I've started a big list in my journal. Consider Kleon’s perspective:
“It’s not that riding my bike makes me feel like I’m 10 years old again — it’s that riding my bike makes me feel the way I wanted to feel when I was 10 years old.”
Recapturing those feelings is a great exercise.
I’ve written here before about how I hack my brain by revisiting past events (real and imagined) and how those trips down the memory vortex can really enhance my mood…and again, focus on the positive memories that boost your vibe for best results).
Not only does this help me get into the groove, this question also serves as a reminder to focus on just how I wanted to feel. In Kleon’s quote, note it’s not the bike riding today, it’s finding the way he wanted to feel as a kid.
How did you want to feel as a 10 year old kid?
I wanted (and still want) freedom.
Mel Gibson yelling FREEDOM in "Braveheart" circa 1995. This inspirational clip is a call to action!
Okay, slight exaggeration, maybe, but I was isolated and oppressed out on the farm. My besties were my dogs and brother. Even on a 3,000 acre dirt farm, things could get dull. I had the wild urge to go somewhere, so I would sometimes ride my bicycle for hours out into the countryside.
This was a fixed gear, single speed bike on gravel roads. (I should have great legs, but alas…)
That is what I’m rooting around for: those deep feelings I had with my all-consuming childhood pastimes.
Another, more relevant, pastime I had was creating.
I built clubhouses (the alternative for kids from the plains where we lacked trees). Even though no one came over, I had elaborate hideouts, secret entrances, and codes of conduct.
I wrote plays. The plays were especially challenging, for we only had one set and two actors. Often they were parodies of movies I had seen.
I made challenging bicycle paths (now, they would be motocross bike trails) complete with hills, water hazards, and hairpin curves.
I built go carts, rebuilt engines, raced in junkers we resurrected for another go.
What was I after with all of that creating? Why do I persist in genning up 2,000 words a day in my creative writing to this day?
It’s not a dissatisfaction with the world around me. I love the world around me.
I’m not compelled to create because of a lack of limelight. I have had far too much attention shined on me and generally shun it.
Maybe I create because it is within me, and I want to exorcise it. More positively, maybe I create because I want to share something of myself.
Maybe a reason I’m going public with it now is because my candle is burning to a puddle and I want to share all I can with the time I have left.
What’s been a childhood feeling you can recapture?
Share in the comments.
