Prompt 28: First Loves

Can you remember your first love?

I don't mean your romantic first love - I mean those things you loved doing as a child.

• What did you wile away the hours doing?
• What did you talk incessantly about to your friends and family?
• What made you so excited that you couldn't get to sleep at night?
• What did you save up your pocket money to buy?

This week's prompt concerns remembering and reconnecting with those 'first loves'.

I look back to my early years and several 'first loves' come to mind.

• In primary school, I remember drawing a lot (I drew a lot of horses and angels).
• At 10, I remember reading (I loved reading Biggles books).
• Throughout my childhood, I remember playing board games (my favourite game was 'Stock Market' - a game I would nag my mum to play and which I almost always seemed to win).
• Lego and building models were something I loved a lot. I used to display my creations with pride around my room and bring them out to show any visitor who came into our house.

• Late in primary school, I remember starting little entrepreneurial businesses (I would pick flowers from neighbours' gardens and sell them to other neighbours and would cut out pictures of Brooke Sheilds from my mother's magazines and sell them to the boys in my class to stick on their school folders).
• The sport I loved more than any other was tennis - we were lucky enough to have courts in our street, and I remember playing on summer evenings until it got so dark we couldn't see the ball anymore.
• I also loved climbing trees - right until I was in my early 20s; I regularly did it!
• We lived at the bottom of a hill on a quiet street, and I loved to ride my bike down at breakneck speed. I would put a little piece of paper on my back wheel to make it sound like a motorbike.
• As a teenager, I remember falling head over heels in love with photography (and spending every spare cent on film and processing)
• At 16, I took a short public speaking course at my church and fell in love with communication through the spoken word.

Some of my first loves were fleeting - things I was obsessed about for days or weeks - others became lifelong passions.

This week my encouragement is to remember (something we've done and found value in the past), but also encourage you to pick one of your first loves and reengage with it.

You might choose something purely for fun. I just messaged my parents to see if they still have 'stock market'. They do, and I will teach it to my kids this weekend.

Or maybe you'll choose something you've previously found meaningful that you've not done for a while. This past weekend I spoke in my church again - my first time speaking in public in over three years.

Why are we doing this week's prompt?

To be honest - I'm not exactly sure. I have no scientific research or data to present to justify it.

I have a hunch that what we love when we're kids could well reveal things about what we love and be meaningful when we're adults too.

Reengaging with those activities, we lost ourselves in during those early years - before we got self-conscious - might create sparks of energy and remind us of what it is to play, dream, and experiment again.

It's just a hunch - humour me - give it a go.

I'd love to hear what you remember as your first love and what you reengage with. Drop a comment below to let us know how you go!