One of the greatest little pleasures I get in life is when I actually watch cartoons. While I mostly like the superhero based ones presently, I’m still a big fan of all of the ones I grew up with. My partner has the tendency to chuckle when he sees me so engrossed in one, but I think that’s because I have the tendency to totally tune out the world and act like a kid when I watch them. What he doesn’t fully grasp, is how therapeutic it is for me to watch these cartoons as it brings me back to a time when I really loved being a kid.
I’ve found over the years that all people have at least one positive memory from their childhood, if not more, buried within themselves of something they once enjoyed doing with any type of frequency, like watching cartoons was for me. While it may take some healing work to access any of them, especially for those who had a dysfunctional childhood, I’ve yet to find a single person who didn’t have at least one thing they really loved doing as a kid. But sadly, most leave those happy childhood memories and the activities they did back then to create them, as just that, memories. Unfortunately, what they fail to realize, like I did for several decades, is how healing it would be for them in the present to do any of those activities again.
It’s really sad to say this, but too many adults stay in adult mode and forget about that child they once were. They grow up and become these mature people who do mature things. And meanwhile, that child lives on within themselves, except they have been put into some inner dark room and neglected. Now picture for just a moment what would happen to a real living, breathing child, if they were put into some dark room in their family’s house and neglected for awhile. I think you can imagine how much that child would be screaming and crying because of their fear, sadness, anguish or anger due to that action. That’s a lot like what happens within all of us if we neglect the child we once were.
I meet adults all the time a lot like how I once was, who have neglected their inner child for years and years, if not their whole adult life. They all appear to share a similar trait in that they seem to be quite often miserable about everything in life. Nothing seems to bring them that giggly joy they might have once felt as a kid. In some cases, such as it was with myself a few years ago, there are those who have neglected their inner child for so long that they’ve become severely depressed and physically sick. Medical studies have shown that there’s a strong connection between a person’s health and the relationship they have with their inner child. Thus it makes sense that a person’s health could decline if they continue to neglect their inner child instead of developing a stronger and healthier relationship with him or her.
In my case, I have found that cartoons is currently one of the strongest connections I have to developing a stronger and healthier relationship with my inner child. As a kid, from as far back as I can remember, until the age of 17, I spent every single Saturday morning watching cartoons between 8am and 12pm. Some of those included The Smurfs, The Snorks, Captain Planet, the Looney Toons, Voltron, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, GI-Joe, the Transformers, Scooby-Doo, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Inspector Gadget, the Superfriends, the Thundercats, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. During those four hours, all of the dysfunctionality in my family went away and I remained deaf to any of their arguments or drama. It was then that my eyes and ears were always glued to the animated characters on the television screen so brightly lit in front of me. And I absolutely loved those hours because it was in those moments that I just really loved being a kid.
A few years ago, I began to realize just how much I neglected my inner child starting around the age of 17 as it was then that I picked up alcohol and stopped doing things such as watching those cartoons. From that point on, I spent the majority of my energy doing everything but what my inner child liked to do. Instead, I chased after things that adults like to pursue such as alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, money, and various other material goods, all of which most kids could ever care less about. But if you think for a moment what a kid might normally like, it’s things such as going to a park and playing on a jungle gym, or playing a pick up game of some type of sport in their neighborhood, or going for a ride on their bike, or reading an exciting book, or taking a hike, or building a sandcastle on a beach, or playing a video game, or like in my case, watching a cartoon. I stopped doing all of those things when my addictions took over my life and my misery grew exponentially because of it. Thankfully that’s not the case for me anymore.
Today, I’m not ashamed to admit that I watch with regularity cartoons such as Ben-10, Ultimate Spider-Man, Beware The Batman, Avengers Assemble, and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. Why? Because it makes the kid in me happy. It brings a smile to that inner child who has lived within me since the day I was born. While my body grew up and matured into adulthood, a part of me always remained a kid. I don’t neglect that kid anymore because I do things regularly such as watching cartoons. And the best part about this is that I seem to have those joyful giggles a lot more these days. But even more importantly, I really believe that this is also a major reason why my health seems to be improving more and more every single day.
So if you happen to be someone who’s become an adult and experiences misery and depression regularly in life, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and find that memory from your childhood of something you once did that brought you great joy. No matter what it is, just try doing it, even if it seems totally silly, and you may find in doing so, that your outlook on life immediately improves…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson