Very thoughtful post, and it's a road my mind travels down often as well. Particularly as I get older. I do get more cynical. I do quash my inner child. I do succumb to long bouts of laziness when, in my younger years, I would have leapt at the opportunity to do this thing or that.

Now I find myself content with less, and doing less, unless I actively take steps to find the things I enjoyed doing.

When I do, I realize I still enjoy them, and it's only complacency that is my enemy, not my entire being.

Sometimes it feels like the inner child/idealistic mind/unburdened lover of life is simply drowning under the weight of years and the burden of living, and he just needs someone to reach down a hand once in a while to pull him up into your daily life.

No new deep thoughts here, and maybe not the angle you're coming from, but it does take effort to live life like a child (albeit more effort as you get older), but there is nothing quite so pleasurable as seeing an old man with the enthusiasm and passion of a child doing something he loves doing. (I hope to be that kind of person when I get old, anyway)