Nice article about the desire to be carefree and how that related to a life well lived. The authors says:
".. a child who isn’t carefree lacks the mental space required for the enjoyment of all the good things in her life."
While that maybe true, the operating definition of carefree and specially how it may manifest itself in a child's life has changed a great deal. Back in my day in India, the only source of entertainment in the house was a radio. Some of us were lucky to have a record player and some vinyl disks. Both were usually not meant for use by the kids.
We found ways to entertain ourselves alone or with our friends. One of my favorite activities was to make kitchen utensils with clay and match-sticks, dry them in the sun and then arrange them in a tiny shed surrounded by pictures from magazines rendered "three dimensional" with some clay as well. Those were by far the most carefree days of my life. My friends at the time were pursuing their own kind of carefree activities - just as absurd as mine.
Each person had their own thing - distinct and different from the others. There was the kid who collected marbles and arranged them in ways that were interesting to him. Another had seeds of various kinds stored in home made cotton pouches. There had to be something unique about the seed to make it to the collection. We never asked each other why we did the things that we did - but we took interest in what each person was making or collecting. It expressed our personality.
Children today cannot be carefree in such primitive ways. They are required to engaged with the real world a lot more which automatically associates them with various degrees of stress. Maybe the part of their life they would recall as being good and happy would be much smaller than ours, which had shrunk from that of our parents and grandparents.
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