Getting old is inevitable, but growing up is a choice. What the latter means is debatable, but it seems, at least from my perspective, much less enjoyable than the alternative. Shortly after university I went to visit a friend living in Madrid. I’d quit my job and used what I’d saved to get a flight and a room for a few months. After a short time, I’d developed a routine of eating lunch in a nearby park. It was early autumn and the leaves had just started to fall, with the grass still a deep green, but peppered with reds and yellows.

I was reading a book and eating when I heard a tiny voice, “¿qué es esto?” Across the path some ways was a little boy, maybe 3 years old. He tottered forward in that awkward way kids do, with their arms out to the sides, not quite knowing what to do with them, before he’d stop and pick up a leaf. His father, walking slowly behind him, hands behind his back would also stop.

The boy would turn and hold the leaf up to his father and ask the question, “what is this?”

“It’s a leaf,” he’d reply enthusiastically, and the boy would laugh and then repeat the process.

This carried on until they’d moved out of earshot and I went back to my book. I think about this sometimes, both of the father’s patience and the game the boy was playing, and how often I forget to enjoy the simple and silly things we do with the gaps in life. The small games we play with each other and with ourselves. It’s something I think kids are great at, and adults less so.

Too often I’ve felt myself trying to get somewhere, as in reaching a goal, a life milestone, or just finishing a project. I tick something off my list so I can get the next thing done so I can put more on my list so I can tick those off to make room for the next thing. I’ll become impatient with the progress I’m making, maybe throw out the list in disgust or develop a new system to keep me on track, only to later to look back and laugh at how ridiculous it all is.

Growing up seems to occur the more seriously you take the world around you. When you forget that everything is a small game that continues on until you’re no longer a player. Some games are fun, others are scary or sad or even dangerous, but they are nonetheless still games.

As adults we understand this, or at least we understand that’s how kids see the world, as evidenced from books and movies where an adult masks dangerous situations as a game, yet we forget that we too are players.