I love watching toddlers. They are so unafraid of life’s meaning. Adults are afraid of the meaning of life and spend most of theirs hiding from the question but not a toddler. He knows all too well life’s meaning; ME. Life to the toddler means only one thing, ME AND ME FIRST. Any restrictions on his ME are met with an unabashed tantrum, crying, throwing himself or anything in reach, in such a pure demonstration of his understanding of life’s meaning. What is so amazing is how quickly a one year old will learn that “tantruming” is not as effective as conning (manipulating) and begins in earnest to learn how each of his human contacts can be conned into doing what he wants. It is a much more nuanced method of “tantruming” and truly demonstrates the brilliance of the human mind. Granted the toddler’s brilliance is based on a toddler because they will immediately revert to the earlier response of “fit-pitching” if the coy and cute looks and actions don’t work but even that is a display of the brilliant adaptation of the human mind. One of the great skills of parenting is to learn to live out “others first” in front of their “me-first” child. Nothing affects a child’s understanding of their own meaning than to watch their parents live out their understanding of life’s meaning.
The first other? God.
No comments:
Post a Comment