My husband and I went out recently. Yes, together. I know! So we had a baby sitter come and take care of the kids.
It turns out the babysitter is quite the artist! She left them a gift, a gorgeous charcoal drawing of a tree.
My 5 year old absolutely love’s to draw. She spends most of her waking hours creating, it’s her favourite pastime. So at the crack of dawn she rocks up to her spot and here is this creation sitting on her drawing desk. The joy on her face was beautiful.
So what happens next?
She starts to draw on it. My older two surface and are horrified. So we wake to the screams of what should become of this drawing. Bleary eyed we talk it out and the drawing is stashed away and preserved relatively intact.
Of course it got me thinking. What changes from 5 to 9 to 12 years of age? My 5 year old saw the tree and in that moment she was inspired. She wanted to invest her energy into it and be part of it in that moment. She wasn’t worried about the future and what it would look like once she was done. Certainly not what anyone else might think. It was the process, the journey and the experience she was interested in.
She was completely present.
The other two of course were thinking in the future and wanted to preserve the past. What they thought was; ‘what if she ruined it’, and that it might look bad…
How often do we lose the potential of ‘the moment’ for what may occur in the future? and isn’t that anxiety in it’s negative form? What actually occurred in the future was that it ended up on the floor and no one cared anymore. I was left wishing I had allowed a little girl to be inspired and invest her energy in the moment.
How refreshing would it be to free ourselves from anxiety and limitation? To stop constantly preserving the past and safeguarding or fearing the future? Because what purpose does it serve?