This week while nursing a bad foot I've been thinking a bit more about Headspace.
What is Headspace?
Headspace to me means the vantage point my mind looks upon everything around of it and relates to it in real time, being a felt, experienced and physical thing I interact with that ties in your sense of you in time and space.
People can have differing senses of head space not least of you're a Middle or Little because you may have, depending on your own development a more adult sense of what you do and how you'd see your role as well as a younger one where in effect you go back to those things and ways of looking at life that you may recall from your childhood.
The way people may move from one to another depends on the individual and their circumstances such as you may have a triggering thing such as a particularly activity that from the second you start to interact with it, you subconsciously move to that side of you.
For example I used to find being in schools often brought out the more Junior side of me so much so if I was left their for long enough on my own I'd 'drop' into being that child or playing with say dolls just does.
It may be also that how you are attired does and with me putting on my school clothes like what I'm wearing right now typing this 'throws the switch'.
I think one thing a good number of us find useful is where we can meet up because it enables us to interactive not just with our own person sense of being a Middle or Little in such a headspace but also with others as if we were over at other folks houses playing which I think is something many of us did as children and it's that kind of feeling we're recreating.
When looking at recreating there is a question to be asked about the extent to which it is or can be complete replication simply because the nature being a child and the 'play' has itself changed over the decades.
The modern child has electronic play devices and quite often access to say a Tablet Computer which may be used to play games on or join sites like Club Penguin or use to write or draw things on. A computer may be part of your Little/Middle headspace.
How much of that we may do when we're together is something that we'll need to work through in the same way thoughtful parents do with their own children and for similar reasons because it is easy-too easy perhaps-to have a situation where we're all huddled together but staring into our own screens so while individually we're having fun the one thing we aren't doing is interacting with each other. That is a genuine concern.
The other area with that and the all pervasive Smartphone is handling Adult related things such as any requirements an individual may have to check emails and the like from 'work' which whatever your personal thoughts on the rights and wrongs of (and I think it has for some gotten too intrusive in folks free time) such things are part of their working conditions they are expected to comply with when outside work such as at such meets.
I feel it needs to be done in way that doesn't disturb the Middle/Little space of other people attending which may involve say the use of your own private space or a designated area and certainly the associated electrical accessories like chargers need to out of peoples way when sitting or walking about.
For some of us, though this isn't necessarily the biggest threat to that very headspace at all and while I won't speak for everybody one reason I do like being in that Middle/Little space is to be free from adult level intrusions not least those I have functional difficulties with.
When we were younger the Grown Ups, knew it mattered that while the Big World went on around us, it was wrong for that to dominate Our World so some conversations and topics were 'not for young ones ears' because playing talking through our thoughts and ideas mattered more for us.
That's why it does matter to some of us the sense of leaving things like political, religious and 'adult matters' out of where we are playing, talking or even sleeping and it may be sensible to check with any Little or Middle if they wish to be involved in or ideally leave that to as something in another room people may do.
Personally I have no inclination at all to engage in discussion around those areas simply because it's not part of Middle me that comes to meets apart from experiences in other groups that had allowed it lead to enmities between folk whose reason for being together had had nothing to do with these topics.
To me then to the extent one cannot and would not want to restrict what people can talk about not least that of any groan ups/Caregivers present, there's something to be said for holding back it until after little bed time or perhaps of having that in just one area of a meet you'd make a deliberate point of entering.
That way it's managed but those of us who are either playing or just resting have our needs respected so we can enjoy ourselves in our younger headspace freely.
For me part of that freedom comes from the knowledge that groan ups will step in and discipline me if I am getting out of or at risk of injuring myself so I just act on the me within and not be so concerned about what if it goes all pear shaped that I just sit there terrified to do anything cos I don't feel able to put it right.
To conclude being in it to me is the mark of being a middle or little. It is us.
