Take a look at humans and you can tell
that when we play chess against ourselves,
we set the game up perfectly on one side
so that we can win effortlessly on the other side.
Almost as if we’re afraid
of playing our hardest
against ourselves


and losing.

And maybe it’s true.
maybe that’s why we stop dreaming
when we grow up,
because we’re afraid to lose.

I remember as a child,
we built cardboard castles
that could touch the sky and blanket forts
so strong they could
keep our parents’ fights away.

we were experts at flying
paper airplanes elegantly
above life’s problems.

So if something broke you along the way,
you gotta understand life just isn’t like that,
nor is something wrong with you
you just forgot how to make airplanes like you used to

you forgot
you’re an air guitar rockstar
that battles aliens on Mars
and on the weekends
we were secret agents.
‘Member that?

you forgot
the best part of having your prince rescue you
is the dresses you get to wear.
so the only thing you have to regret
is letting them convince you were anything less than perfect.

And I think that what King really meant was
we all get to have a dream.
And if Hitler convinced an entire country that
some people really aren’t people at all
Maybe I can convince this crowd
we don’t wanna be people, we wanna be children.

children who grew up on poorly paved streets,
hoping that someday someone would vacuum the shards of broken beer bottles out of the cracks.
So when we fell from our day dreams,
we wouldn't scrape our knees as badly.

And in those day dreams,
we looked down on the city
from the 110th ledge of a building whose lobby wasn't open to us,
so we climbed up there and peeked in through the windows
hoping we weren't the next to fall.

We were the kids all playing in the same playground,
building cardboard castles
and eating homemade hope our mothers cooked for us.

And the best response we had to depression
was to tie up your scars into a jump rope
and make some good memories.

And yeah,
maybe we had no idea of what “real” problems were,
but we wore REAL smiles,
so I think that you sir,
don’t know what the “real” world is.

We fought with swords that didn’t cut
and guns that didn’t shoot
but you know better than anyone else,
our honesty was dangerous,
and grown ups are too afraid to use it.

We danced at every party and to every song
simply ‘cause it was fun
and there’s power in that.


So let me tell you, you’re biggest mistake
was thinking childhood was supposed to end.
Because somewhere deep down,
we were meant to play and love
and create
and love
and fall
and love
and rise
and love
and laugh and love and love
and love and love and love
like the children we all are at heart.

Because someday we will return to those
poorly paved streets with the shards of broken beer bottles in them.
And on dusty windows of broken down cars
we will write,
"We weren’t afraid to lose, so we made it.”