i missed being the kid at 6

i recently read a substack article called i wish i was a kid again.

and it made me think about how often we miss being a kid, without really knowing what it is we miss.

the author believes it’s the infrastructure of childhood. as a kid, life just happened around you. you found yourself on a trip, and the fridge refilled itself. you fell asleep in the backseat and woke up somewhere else. christmas was a natural phenomenon, not two tired adults up past midnight putting batteries into plastic toys.

now you know how much work goes behind everything that felt effortless. as she puts it, adulthood is mostly paperwork disguised as freedom.

i agree. but i don’t think that’s what i miss about being a kid.

i miss going somewhere just to go.

earlier this year i went to a mall to get lunch, and i felt sad. not depressed, not anxious. just quietly, specifically sad. i’d been to this mall a hundred times. i know which stall has the shorter queue. nothing was different.

except, standing there waiting for my food, i realised: when i was six, going to the mall was the point. you were just going to the mall. now i’m there to eat, or to buy something, or to kill forty-five minutes before the next thing. the mall didn’t change. the version of me who could walk in with no reason did.

and once i saw it, i saw it everywhere.

as a kid, being in the car meant you were going somewhere good. now the commute is the cost of arriving. as a kid, a public holiday was a free day. now it has paperwork around it before it starts: is it a long weekend, can i attach leave, what gets pushed. as a kid, saturday was just saturday. now even rest has to be earned, or explained to yourself. as a kid, you could be somewhere with someone and just be there together. now half of you is in the week.

i don’t miss being a kid because things were easier. i miss it because i was fully inside things.

the article ends on a hopeful line: it’s less magical, sure. but it’s also mine in a way childhood never was. i think that’s true. the scaffolding you can see now, the work behind everything that used to look effortless, is yours in a way the effortlessness never was. you’re the one driving while everyone else sleeps.

but sometimes a walk can just be a walk. sometimes lunch can just be lunch. and hopefully, one day, the mall can just be a mall again.

so now, when i catch myself rushing through something, i ask: can this just be the point today?

i don’t have a better answer than that. but naming it is at least something.