Kids don’t mean to be so profound, but they just can’t help it. Their youthful wisdom spills out freely and beautifully.
Yesterday, I picked up our kids from kindergarten and benefited from one of those nuggets of wisdom. Sarah is usually the one to pick up our kids from school, but she’s been working like crazy to plan and prepare for this season's holiday markets.
And so, I had the pleasure of picking up the kids from school. When we change our schedules around, however, we first paint mental pictures of the day-to-day routine for our kids. “Tomorrow, Mommy is going to drop you off at school, where you get to play all morning and eat yummy millet rolls, and then Daddy will pick you up,” and so on and so forth. When they know what to expect, they just seem to digest the day better.
And so, when I picked up our kids from kindergarten yesterday, I launched into one of those mental pictures of what the next few unpredictable days would look like. I started with, “All right, for tomorrow…” before my little boy stopped me.
He said, “But Daddy, everyday is today.” I stopped myself and smiled. Yes, it is, little buddy, yes it is.
He is right. We live entirely in the present, but we dwell on the past and plan for the future. As grown-ups, we cannot forget the past or walk blindly into the future. At the same time, however, we must ask ourselves: how much of the present is lost because of worry about what has been and what will be?
For the rest of the day, I tried to embrace my little boy’s mantra of “everyday is today.” I tried to remind myself to be fully present reading stories to our kids and biking around the neighborhood with them.
I allowed myself a glimpse of what it means to be fully present, if only for a few precious moments. Thanks for that gift, buddy.