inner child, inner adult

You sort of know what people are talking about when they refer to "your inner child." The inner child is the one who is bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed, unencumbered, tender, fully alive and knows what a rose smells like without being told.

The inner child is also the one self-helpers extol (and fatten their bank accounts with) while the rest of us wistfully regret. The inner child is the one who sang and danced before any of us got a day job. The thought of the inner child is infused with and freighted by a sense of "if only...."

But whereas I have heard references to an "inner child," I don't think I have ever heard similar crooning for what might be called the "inner adult." I wonder why.

Assuming for a moment that there were such a thing as an "inner adult," how might this being be described? Wouldn't an inner adult, like an inner child, be stripped of the social accretions that so often pile up with adulthood -- all the fitting in with possessions and thoughts and beliefs ... using meaningless terms as if they meant something because everyone else said they meant something ... "hand-crafted beer or bread" or "moving forward" or "issues" as a somehow kooler and more adult way of saying "problems?"

All the compromises at day jobs and night-time adventures -- wouldn't they (wistfully) fall away until what was thick with rusty, second-hand add-ons was revealed as ... as ... as bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed, unencumbered, tender, fully alive and knowing what a rose smelled like? You know -- the inner child who is, in reality, the inner adult.

In such a land, would anyone be wistful or worried about some fabrication like an "inner child" or an "inner adult?"