Noelle said to me, when I asked if she wanted to be a teacher if mama and her opened a school,
“No, I’m going to be lots of different things.”
How different than when I was young, when the inclination to do many things was absolutely there (I changed what I was going to be every 6 months or so), but my psyche would only accept that I had one shot, that I had to choose.
And yet, it has been my lifetime that has shown me human beings can in fact be many things and in many ways are probably much happier this way. At least the ones like me are
So how did she know this at 3, what I have taken my life to discover?
I am convinced little ones are born knowing what the previous generation had to learn.
This is the great gift of life, it progresses forward.
If they aren’t born knowing it, then it doesn’t take long for them to know it because the whole physical world is a living, breathing manifestation of the previous generations’ ideals. They have simply to interact with it to understand it.
This is what I believe creates a generation gap. It is difficult for one standing from a place of having had to learn and experience certain things to understand the fullness with which children already grasp those concepts and now need to make their own world standing from their new perspective.
In many respects, the making of our world is a large part of our parenting, it is the shoulders our little ones will stand on to reach ever greater heights.
Perhaps my children and I will have spiritual conversations about the nature of life, but perhaps not. Perhaps they will watch the way in which I move in this world, observe what I value and then observe the world this has created with its corresponding beauty and flaws. Perhaps this is all they will need to take the baton
And run with it.
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