Scrolling through social media I came upon an interesting pattern. Whenever the children start growing up the parents put up pictures of them with sometimes a saddened message along the lines of surprise ” where did the years go by? Or how did this happen my little baby or OMG you are old enough to drive ? Or you are leaving us to go to the next grade in school !” And so on. Sound familiar?
It is like as if the concept of the child growing up is alien, or the fact that their educational evolution was a complete mystery. Do we say the same things to the earth or to our flowers ” omg its amazing how you have grown ! Or look how much you have aged? ” No we don’t. Why? Because we take certain things for granted. That nature will grow and evolve. Flowers and children will grow and evolve. The earth does not cry about how quickly all the living creatures are growing or for that matter then also dying. It obeys its own law of nature.
So then why do we as adults secretly mourn the growth of the kids. It is perhaps in my opinion we have not taken the time to see our own growth and evolution. We have been so “busy” we have failed to see how ever so slowly we also grow each day. This is true because if we look at a social media picture from 5y ago ( that FB is so kind to remind us of our mortality) and then look at ourselves in the present day, we are at times startled by the transformation. Sometimes good sometimes bad, entirely our perception.
When we see the kids grow ” so quickly” it is our own rapid growth that we have missed, and in some moments we feel the regret of events we may have missed or things that we have not yet done in our lives and time is passing for us also ” so quickly “.
SO what can we do? Stay in gratitude each day when we look ourselves in the mirror and see the beautiful transformation of ourselves from moment to moment. It is this minutia of change that we embody, which inherently we then see in our kids. WE do not react with secret sorrow or blatant praise, yet steady gratitude as we see that not only the flowers and these children are part of nature, but so are we. And in so doing,adhering to the laws of nature. Simple. No surprise.
We are the beauty that we seek. We are the light that we seek. We are the growth that we seek. We are the gratitude that the universe seeks.
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I love you
