I love all the pleasantly deep answers in this thread.

For my input: I'm everything I ever was, all at once.

You know how lenses refract over each other at the optometrist? Or how colors combine when you stack transparent cups in the washer? That's me. I have parts from everyone I ever met, and parts from everyone I ever was. There's no mask, even if I focus on one part of the mosaic in a meeting vs. another when I nerd out w/ a buddy -- it's all equally me.

I'm not Shrek though. Onions have layers, but I'm prismatic glass, chips and dips and all.

No, I'm very different from how I was as a kid.

I sort of feel the opposite. My childhood self was least like who I really am. Aging has been a process of becoming my true self and expressing it honestly. If anything, the only thing that feels like a mask is my aging body—but my spirit/truth is constantly in a process of being revealed.

I have really enjoyed adulthood so much more than childhood. Am everyone I ever was, in a way, and not jaded yet so figure that's never gonna happen, but no I don't feel like a kid inside, and am quite happy about that.

What did y'all experience in childhood that makes you want to be a kid?

This feels like the thesis for Lord of the Flies.

No? I’m in my 40s and I’m never sure what people mean by inner child.

Like I try to do all the things I want to do but age does help you figure out what piper is worth paying.

Like I can eat like shit and play games for 12 hours but experience tells me that the next day I’ll feel like shit. Sometimes I’m happy to pay that price

I'm 50. I like to pretend that I'm 50 when it comes to work, but my friends and even a few long time coworkers know that I'm just a big kid. I genuinely feel more comfortable hanging out with younger people most the time. Aside from the occasional ache or pain, age just feels like a number to me.

I'm over 40 and I play with Legos, I game on a regular basis, and I wear shirts from cartoons like Bluey and Gudetama. I have no kids, and I have never felt the urge to stop doing "childish" things. I enjoy the stupid things in life that bring me joy. Why quit them?

I still feel like a kid, although I make my best to conceal it from others. Very few get to see the closest representation of who I really am.

Waking up each morning and stepping outside is still more than capable to make me smile in wonder of the world I live in and the things I get to enjoy from it.

Nearly 30 (so that mask is not so old yet), I think there is a time and place for everything. Sometimes it's needed to be more sensible and responsible, I do think however that this is a slither of the time we spent in life. My manager also loves to make the remark: be wary that you start to find all of this and yourself too important. When we talk tech, he can show his inner child with ease and we can joke and laugh for hours, but when we need to be serious about topics we can be as well.

In my personal opinion, life's too short to live it for others. I really dislike that from a certain age people expect you to be acting like something, even though these same people hate doing so. But who knows, maybe in a year or ten I might have a totally different opinion, life's funny like that

I'm 35, I still buy toys in toy aisles, I still have cartoons from my past on lists when streaming stuff.

Here's how I look at it - I'm responsible of an adult to do adult things when I need to. There's just some things though that I'm allowed to do in my own space, away from everyone. It's nobody's fucking business. And I do admire those that are open about this thing. I do understand now why some people say that age is a number, in this context.

Besides, I find adult life pretty damn boring anyways. At my age, I'm expected to be knee-deep into sports, I'm expected to have had retirement savings like 401k, I'm expected to have a career I'm slaving myself to and all that shit. All the while wearing plain-ass clothing and getting into boring-ass conversations with NPCs.

Fuck all of that. You do you, I do me.

My inner child died of dysentery many moons ago

All I know for sure, is that the older I get, the more I realize that every adult I've ever known was just a large child in an older body.

Grandma? SUPER old kid. Mom? Older kid.

Nobody knows what the fuck they're doing here, or what anybody else is doing here. This concept of growing up and suddenly knowing things was a lie perpetuated throughout my entire childhood.

I would lean towards no. I'm me. I don't consider the things that people seem to associate with their "inner child" to be exclusive to children, so I don't feel a tension between my desire to act responsibly and my sense of wonder, joy, and playfulness.

Age isn't a mask hiding the inner child, it's a toolkit that helps them appreciate and engage with those things. My childish delight at birds flitting about the bird feeder is only enhanced by being able to buy my own, keep them filled, and the ability to understand more about everything that goes on with them. I have the experience and faculties to answer questions I have, which only deepens my appreciation for the "common" wonders we see everywhere. Experiencing more of life and it's lows only makes the highs sweeter.

A child plus age and experience is an adult. You don't need to lose the happiness to get there.

I get that.

I'm only 25 so I don't have much responsibilities to hide behind and feel adult. Not that i'd like them, I kinda have a fear of them, sometimes.

Although, being a young adult, I especially get this feeling alongside feeling lost.

When your an adult there isn't anything guiding you, so like the child without guidance you're lost. It's then you see life's pointlessness, because the only point of living were always the arbitrary goals others gave.

In that regard responsibilities are also outside goals that guide you.

In a more joyful note, I don't even know why fun should be childish but it's amazing to be at all age.

Those two facts alone are what makes me think of how similar I still am to the child me.

I feel like I'm less mature than people treat me. I also recognize that I look on my maturity in the past with rose colored glasses.

There's an internal age we feel personally, there's an external age we present as -- and then there's an age that can brought out of us, based solely on circumstances.

In the case of all three, for the sake of this idea gaining some traction with most folks reading, I might re-label 'age' as 'identity', or even some kind of part of ourselves, coming to the forefront out of necessity. This idea comes from Internal Family Systems Theory.

When we are faced with circumstances that invite us to 'act our age,' such as knowing we need to get good rest for the next day, that's the part of us that comes to the forefront to help because we have the experience to know so. That part of us is there to protect us from experiences we've had in the past that may have sucked, such as having to go into work after a late night of Mountain Dew and gaming. That part's job might even be as a 'protector,' who supports us in taking responsibility seriously, practicing readiness, having some forethought.

Likewise, when we are faced with circumstances that invite us to entertain children, such as playing pretend or being silly, that's the part of us that we had at the forefront of that age, and we can call it up in a kind of way that doesn't feel like 'faking' it. That part of us is there to continue a sort of 'zone of play' we all liked, where it was fun and easy to 'yes and' other kids into a made-up game with made-up rules, or do something goofy because we all felt goofy. That part's job might be as a 'joy-bringer,' who supports us in exercising freedom, living out radical invitation, being creative. Simple, dumb joy.

All parts are necessary, and the parts are neither good or bad. Just parts.

Nothing ever disappears, either -- nor should it disappear, regardless of whichever part of us is so drastically at the forefront as to convince all the other parts that they aren't important to function in this life -- even at 40.

Hell, especially at 40.