Every teenager is a candidate for Living but not every teenager takes part. What separates the participants from the wallflowers?
To answer the question, you may look to norms. You may look to your own teenagers; you may look to your pediatrician. But to really answer it, You must look to you.
Are You a Candidate for Living? Or are you a Wallflower?
Recently, I had the great pleasure of going to Disney World for the day. Disney does an very good job at an awful lot of things. But what it does best, I think, is bring out the kid in us all. The goofy kid, the enthusiastic kid, the playful kid, the adventurous kid. And if you’re willing, the uninhibited, free-spirited kid. I saw quite a few during the afternoon parade. The song and the scene that struck me most, was “Shake it”. Lots of Disney Characters took part, dancing alongside the float, some of them even on stilts!
That was inspiring for sure, but what I was most inspired by was a very special young man. He had Down Syndrome. But You know what? As I watched him, dancing with abandon, I was smiling from silver hoop earring to silver hoop earring. What was clear, at first glance was his sense of joy. It made me happy just to observe him, experiencing such core-level joy. It made me cry, first from happiness, but also from a little sadness, at my own inhibition. It made me wonder, where, along the way I had picked it up, and decided to carry it along, to my detriment. What great fun it would be to wear a costume, dance and engage the way I’d really want to, if I weren’t carrying all of this baggage around.
You can’t dance and sing and bounce like Tigger
if you’re carrying baggage around.
Tiggers have an awful lot of bouncing to do,
and baggage keeps them from getting
to the heights they’d like to.
I guess we pick up inhibition when we pick up fear of disapproval, and fear of wondering how we’ll look to others. Sadly, we pick up self-judgment along the way.
As I watched this young man, who some might pity, I saw a complete lack of inhibition, and a complete state of oneness—with the music, and indeed, with those of us around him, who, by our engaging in his joy, were incrementally creeping into our own joy, and out of our long overdue shells.
We are all candidates for living, but we’re not all taking part.
If we want our teenagers to take part, then we have to take part ourselves, casting aside our own inhibitions, looking at what’s kept us from engaging with our own joy. We absolutely need to model it ourselves, but also to encourage and support it, in the lives of our teenagers. Because it’s a great big world out there, chock full of opportunities, just bursting with Joy.
Wall flowers rarely get to see the sun.
And that’s where all of the Disney Parades take place.
Come out and shake it!
Just try it and see,
You may find, if you do,
It’s the only way
to really Be.
