Mountains of Arizona
Sunny 61 Degrees
7:11 a.m.
Today is my son, Egan’s, 13th birthday.
Egan isn’t interested in manual labor. He doesn’t like to “work” as most people would define it. He doesn’t do his “chores.” He doesn’t keep his room clean.
Instead, he spends his days doing what he wants to do. He likes to spend time with people he enjoys and he doesn’t have much interest in the minutiae of life. He creates, he plays, he experiences life and learns from those experiences.
And he rides his bike, A LOT, as you can see in this video:
As a parent, we’re trained to believe that this is a problem. We’re trained that kids this age should be doing certain things, at certain times, for certain reasons.
What if they fall behind? What if they can’t hack it in the real world? What if they aren’t prepared for LIFE? You can’t raise a child without discipline! How will they grow up to BE somebody if you don’t make sure that happens?
It’s time for this line of thinking to end because it ruins children.
Thoughts like these are born out of fear. And FEAR is not something we come into this world with, it is something we are TAUGHT.
And THAT means, that at the core of many of these things we “want” for our children, is just the wound inside ourselves we’ve never offered the required attention to heal.
I refuse to pass this on.
As it turns out, Egan is one of my first teachers. But it took me forever to begin learning the lessons he was offering to teach me.
Years ago, he taught me about what to do with anger by reflecting back to me exactly what I had going on inside. It was not pretty.
Next, he taught me there are far more ways to communicate with others than just through eloquent, well-structured speech.
There is the communication of the heart where little needs to be said for many deep messages to be exchanged.
Most of all, he has taught me that “figuring out life” and trying to control life is a silly thing to do with your energy and that TRUSTING LIFE TO FLOW is, by far, the smartest approach.
For kids, this is the easiest thing in the world.
For conditioned adults, it takes guts.
All you need to do is make the choice. You allow the life you think you’re “supposed to live” to fall away and reveal the actual life you are here to enjoy.