Where Did Our Silliness Go?

When Did Life Become So Serious?

Yesterday I was walking along the river when a family joined the same path. A little boy was racing ahead on his bike and his younger sister was desperately trying to keep up on a scooter. As children often do, she was giving it absolutely everything, concentrating so hard on catching her brother that she forgot to look where she was going and then BAM. Hit the deck.

Quite a dramatic tumble. Personally, I'd have cried.

Her mum, who was a few metres behind, started walking a little faster and called out, "You okay?". The little girl looked down at her knees for about half a second, brushed them off, said "Yep," and jumped straight back onto the scooter, back to the very serious business of chasing her brother again.

"Impressive recovery" I nodded to her mother as I walked by.

I do a lot of my best thinking on that river path, but not usually with such a spectacular catalyst.

So what did it spark a thought about? Resilience!

I don't know whether she was particularly resilient, maybe she's just been raised not to make a fuss. Maybe she'd fallen over a hundred times before, or maybe she has a very high pain threshold.

Maybe she simply had something more important to do than think about scraped knees.

I found myself wondering when that changes.

If I'd fallen over yesterday, I'd probably have been checking whether I'd twisted my ankle, wondering how many client appointments I'd have to move if it was broken, calculating how much physiotherapy costs these days and deciding I probably ought to buy some better walking shoes. In fact, you can be damn sure you'd never have caught me enjoying myself on a scooter in the first place.

Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, that level of enjoyment from tasks that aren't particularly purposeful seems to have become a difficult thing to justify and the thought of falling over seems to become an event.

I've been exploring why.

1. Maybe we just have more to lose.

When I was twenty-six I sold pretty much everything I owned, packed a backpack and went travelling. I had very little money, no plan, no property, a growing career that I wasn't that bothered to lose or come back to.

It was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Now I'm seriously considering doing something similar again, and somehow it feels infinitely more complicated.

The obvious answer is that my circumstances are different. I own a house now, have businesses and work to do, people who might be reliant on me. There are responsibilities that didn't exist back then.

Psychologists have a name for this. It's called loss aversion. Once we own something, whether that's money, stability or even an identity, we're naturally more motivated to protect it than we are to gain something new.

2. Maybe our priorities change

That little girl wasn't thinking about the fall because she was thinking about her brother, the fall was just an inconvenience. As adults, I wonder if we accidentally reverse those priorities and somehow every obstacle becomes the story, rather than the destination. The thing we wanted to do gets postponed while we assess each obstacle from every possible angle.

Research suggests that as we get older we naturally become more focused on avoiding losses than chasing gains. It makes sense that experience teaches caution. Unfortunately, it also teaches hesitation.

3. Maybe experience is unhelpful sometimes

Children don't have decades of evidence telling them what might go wrong, but adults do.

By the time you reach your thirties or forties you may have been made redundant, had your heart broken, worried about money, lost people you love or watched plans fall apart despite your best efforts. Your brain stores it all, which is purposeful and useful. If every difficult experience taught us nothing we'd keep making the same mistakes forever.

But I do think there comes a point where experience starts shading in the light spots, leading us to make assumptions about situations that haven't actually happened yet. We're no longer reacting to what's in front of us, because each potential bad outcome encourages a reaction to everything that happened before.

4. Maybe responsibility changes the calculations

A scraped knee when you're eight means finding a plaster. A twisted ankle at thirty-eight might mean cancelled work, rearranged childcare, missed income or a holiday you can no longer enjoy.

The injury hasn't really changed but the consequences have and this then ties in immediately to the point above about previous experiences colouring our assumptions.

5. Maybe time starts to feel different

One theory I came across called Socioemotional Selectivity Theory, developed by psychologist Laura Carstensen, suggests that when we're young, time feels endless. There's always another opportunity. Another job, holiday, relationship. Another chance.

As we get older, whether consciously or not, we begin to realise that our time isn't unlimited after all, which changes how we make decisions. We become more careful and selective, even a little protective of the life we've built.

Again, none of this sounds irrational, but I actually find this one the most contradictory human behaviour, since you would think that a shortness of time would lead us to live the fullest life rather than being quite so careful.

6. Or maybe the world really has just changed since we were young...

Sometimes I wonder whether we put too much pressure on ourselves to explain everything as personal growth or ageing.

The last few years haven't exactly been uneventful. We've lived through a pandemic, rising living costs, constant notifications, endless news updates and technology that seems to reinvent itself every six months. Even work has changed beyond recognition.

I don't know whether people are genuinely less resilient than they used to be, but I do know that it feels as though our brains are being asked to process far more information than they ever have before, making it harder to make a difficult decision feel simple.

I'm not actually convinced we lose resilience, I think curiosity and silliness disappears first. Children are willing to try things that might not work, adults spend a lot of energy protecting the lives they've already built and taking it all very seriously.

I'd rather not lose my house or my business and I'd rather not lose the people I care about, but I do sometimes wonder whether there's a point where protecting our lives becomes so important that we slowly stop living them.

So maybe I just need to blow my existing life up, dust off the knee scrapes and say "Yep," to the next exciting adventure that presents itself, right?

Back on my imaginary scooter, chasing the next little dream.

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