Life and Lessons...from June 2009

Life is made up of lessons....little sprigs of time and ideas, that fall into place at specific moments when they become relevent or necessary.

I spent alotta time in my life, thinking that I had to have some sort of an "agenda" all the time...a "plan" for what I'd teach my kids...a specific all-around master idea, that I would build upon every day, adding information that all added up to the main objective. It all had to feed into eachother...each idea....it had to come together in the master plan.

This was wrong....

I have found, that life is a series of moments, experiences, taking in of views and opinions, differing sometimes from my own...but being soooo valuable and memorable, and worthy of consideration...of making a part of my belief system...a part of the belief system I want my children to learn.

Any subject, at any time, has the potential for turning into a learning experience. One can just glide thru the days, knowing and believing what they've been told...or they can look harder...delve deeper into things. Experiment, consider other people's opinions, reactions, knowledge.
You can just accept that you know all there is to know about something....or you can look deeper and really discover the mechanics of whatever it is you are thinking about.

This, I am realizing....
...that you can take life "as a whole"...looking at a wide landscape...a picture...and only let in the information thats widely accepted...make your experiences spread out like thinly spread butter...jus getting by.

OR

...you can experience each moment, in and of itself. You can feel happiness, or sadness, curiosity, joy, anger, etc.  You can learn about so many things, enrich your life, learn from listening to others, feeling what they have felt, hearing whats in their hearts, using it to better your own self as a human being. You can take one moment in time...an opportunity, to show a child the right way...without raising your voice, without belittlement, without chastisment.  You can take a moment in time to teach a lesson...to show your love or caring feelings.

I'm realizing this today....life is not a "big picture" as I once thought...but an intricate balance of all that is real. Its all the little things, but not letting them be "smeared" together. In trying to teach so much at once and all together, we miss the opportunity to teach the most valuable of gifts, the simple things, simple emotions, uncomplicated lessons...