5 Reasons Dinosaurs Keep Us Young

Some things such as dinosaurs never get old.  Unfortunately, people are not among those things.

Yep, ageism is alive and well among humans.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t need the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).  We also wouldn’t need the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act.  What’s sad is people too young to need that law’s protection may unknowingly be some of the hugest violators of the directive to respect your elders.

I believe ageism is simply discrimination’s flavor of the month.  In my opinion, it is because our social system revolves around money.  Once we enter the work force, we begin to take ourselves too seriously.  We buy into the capitalistic mentality that we must work hard, work fast, sell more, buy more to be successful as defined by the status quo.  We start allowing our jobs to define us.  We develop strong work ethics.

We devote our time to working and doing what others expect us.  We’re told such things as “Grow up and smell the coffee.  Stop dreaming and get to work.  Act your age not your shoe size.”  We lose touch with childlike awe and wonderment.  We forget life is supposed to be fun.  We forget it is OK to laugh.  It is OK to dream.  It is OK to play by expressing our imagination.  We forget how to play.

A popular YouTube rapper and tarot card reader who calls himself the Autistic Mystic summed it up best when he said, “Most people die at 17 but don’t get buried until they’re 72.”

In “The Artist’s Way”, author Julia Cameron suggests we schedule weekly artist’s dates to remain in touch with our inner child.  She contends adults think with two brains, which she calls the “logic brain” and the “artist brain”.  The logic brain plays it safe and limits our ability to reach our full potential while the artist brain is our inner child’s desire to make new connections by remembering everything is from the one source many of us call God.

The artist’s date is designed to take yourself – by yourself – and return your serious self to an era when your job was child’s play.

“We forget that the imagination at play is at the heart of all good work,” Cameron wrote.

Artist Pablo Picasso affirmed the child in each of us is an artist at heart.  “Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

Since I’m developing a book to help baby boomers take a new age approach to addressing ageism, the concept of an artist’s date makes sense to me.  So last week, I took my inner child back in time to reconnect with creatures who no longer exist although they withstand the test of time.

I visited Wonder of Dinosaurs.  Since childhood, I have been fascinated by these prehistoric creatures.  I learned I was young enough to enjoy the children’s attraction.  I was welcomed by the brachiosauruses, velociraptors and triceratops who work there.  Their human colleagues were somewhat judgmental, proving ageism is a mindset.  They could have taken 5 lessons from their reptilian colleagues to remain young-at-heart.

#1  Dinosaurs Enable Us to Connect with Our Inner Child

When I asked to purchase a ticket, two youngsters on the top level of the museum where a prehistoric playground offered mazes and bouncing activities, said I was an adult and needed to be accompanied by a child.  I proudly announced I was accompanied by a child – my inner child.

They looked at me as if I were crazy.  I quickly explained I was on an artist’s date, and I was young at heart.  My explanation didn’t register.  I could tell  when one of the young women said, “But you’re old.”

I stood firmly in my truth when I responded, “Well, I’m physically older than you are, but your main attractions have a couple of years on me.”

They wouldn’t sell me a ticket, so I went downstair to the museum level.  There I met the mall manager, who I mistakenly mistook for a dinosaur museum employ.  I asked if I was young enough to get a ticket if I avoided the upstairs playground.

“This is an attraction for children from one to 92,” he said, getting into the holiday spirit.

Then I began my journey to a bygone era when chestnuts weren’t roasted on an open fire because there were no cavemen to rub sticks together to create flames when they uttered the magic word, “Ugh!”

#2  Dinosaurs Remind Us to Think Big

The exhibit was better than I expected.  At the time, I didn’t realize Wonder of Dinosaurs housed the largest collection of miniature dinosaur replicas on the West Coast.  The documentation emphasized how large these giant creatures were.  Well, many of them ate trees.  So, they had to be three times taller than a human.

Some of them winked flirtatiously at me.  Others roared and thrashed their tails.  Still more waved their tiny arms and moved their heads to look me straight in the eyes.  I overheard a mother telling her two toddlers not to be afraid because the creatures were robots.

Still, I understood the children’s fear.  It reminded me that dreaming big leads to huge opportunities and major accomplishments.  Yet, the robotic wildlife was just as real – and just as frightening - as the news scientists are using artificial intelligence to create people. 

#3  Dinosaurs Intrigue People of All Ages

The history of our planet has fascinated people long before I took my first breath on it.  Some of those people might include you.  It is not uncommon for children to use their imaginations to visualize experiences of existence alongside these prehistoric giants.

Adults still get excited when paleontologists unearth bones revealing proof that other lifeforms existed here millions of years before we came along.  I contend the enormity of these bones are good for human egos.

I posed with a couple of the replicas.  They made me feel young and small.  I wondered why I haven’t visited this museum before.  Then, I remembered I was probably working.  I have a part-time gig testing age-defiance products because I don’t want to be viewed by others as an old fossil.

#4  Dinosaurs Inspire Art

Dinosaurs inspired William Hanna and Joseph Barbera to create The Flintstones, an animated television show about people living in the Stone Age who encounter modern day problems.  Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble were hilarious as they proved week after week that humans tend to manufacture their own problems – often needlessly.

In 1993, Steven Spielberg introduced us to Jurassic Park, a science fiction movie about a dinosaur theme park developed by genetic engineering that goes wrong.  Maybe that’s why I find those AI baby pods frightening as art tends to imitate life.

#5  Dinosaurs Remind Us to Live Forever

While an asteroid dropped out of the sky and ended the dinosaur age.  The fascinating, humongous creatures remain alive in our minds.  They spark imagination.  They encourage us to dream about life with unlimited potential.  By visiting them with our inner child, they remind us to take ourselves less seriously.  They remind us that life is exciting while author and humorist Mark Twain reminds us that ageism is a mindset. 

“Age is an issue of mind over matter.  If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter,” he stated.

After all, there was life on Earth before us.  There likely will be life when we venture on in the cosmos.  Therefore, I encourage you to do what Bob Dylan suggested:  remain Forever Young.