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Yesterday I traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, and had a trifecta. I was on a panel with the Dalai Lama, publicly shouted down someone who tried to heckle him, and walked away understanding his universal popularity.
To explain it I need a minute.
About fifteen year ago ago, Michael Jackson told me that the most successful adults are those who are like children. He made a compelling case, using examples of personal acquaintances. He spoke of how much Nelson Mandela loved practical jokes. How Paul McCartney had one of the world’s largest cartoon collections. And how Steven Spielberg had shown time and again – in brilliant movies like E.T. and Jurassic Park – that he is just a big kid.
Michael connected creativity with childlike playfulness and inquisitiveness. But there was something deeper. Children are innocent. Michael believed that adults were those who had been corrupted by negative events. They’d experienced pain and had become mean. They’d experienced heartbreak and had become cynical. But children were always as soft as the day they were born. They had no scar tissue.
Michael wanted to be a big kid. He sought to recapture the childhood that had been denied him. In the 30 hours of conversation that we recorded in order to create the book, The Michael Jackson Tapes, we explored the issue at length. It makes for compelling reading.
Michael’s idea intrigued me but I felt it needed serious clarification. Surely we don’t believe that it is virtuous for a child not to grow up and to remain irresponsible? Surely we believe in maturity and complexity of emotion.
So I wedded Michael’s idea of the innocence of a child with the responsibility of an adult and came up with “Kidults” — the man or woman who is an adult on the outside and a kid within, never losing their childhood curiosity, faith, and hope for the future.
I found a Biblical image as a foundation for the idea. In the Garden of Eden, prior to their sin, Adam and Eve are described as essentially as being adults who are childlike. They frolic naked and are not ashamed. They are aware but are not self-conscious. They are innocent of sin. Their outer and inner selves are one, the light of the soul shining through unhindered. Later, when they sin – which we might interpret as a metaphor for growing up – they leave paradise. Our childhood is Eden. People love us. We’re cute. There are no serious consequences for our actions. We don’t know death or suffering. Life is Disneyland and about the worst it gets is having to do homework.
With adulthood comes the knowledge of conflict, financial burdens, divorce, and heart-break. Going back to Eden involves reclaiming some of our lost childlike innocence. For people with a broken heart it means believing in love again. For those have lost loved ones it means believing in life again. There is always a path back to paradise.
On the stage today with the Dalai Lama I was enthralled to see the concept come to life before my eyes. Before me was a wise, gentle, remarkably playful yet immensely awe-inspiring sage who seemed to lack even a hint of malice or guile. When I took my 21-year-old son Mendy for a picture with the Dalai Lama, he grabbed Mendy’s beard, started playing with it, and insisted I take the picture. On stage in front of thousands he offered a steady-stream of self-effacing humor that had the audience in stitches. At one point he told us all that we would go to heaven but that he might go to hell.
Yet his message soared with the idealism of a perfect world filled with love. It was deeply Messianic and neatly captured the vision of Zachariah, Micah, and Isaiah.
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Read more at http://observer.com/2014/10/my-weekend-with-the-dalai-lama-and-his-portable-homeland/#ixzz3HNrna4XI
Source: observer /
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