Tuesday's Thought

One of the things I would like to do in this new year is to teach the children to look for the possibilities in life. Every day is filled with opportunities and possibilities and discoveries that will make their little lives richer and deeper. It's a matter of the eternal search that makes that richer life apparent. I would like to teach this to them before they go off to school, because I believe that school can be a "safety zone" of "not having to discover - only having to 'hand back' what is expected" and that nullifies the whole human notion of possibilities.

A possibility is something that can happen if one works hard enough to make it happen. But that possibility is all but hidden from the non-curious, the non doer, the guy who is trapped in the idea that there is only one mousetrap out there.

My daughter, Katy, has a sign in her office at work: "Just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean it was always a stupid way of doing it."

This sign is meant to shake up the people who think that just because they have always done something one way, there isn't a better way to do it. Let's look at cooking as an example of "always...." "I've always used this pan to make this dish; I've always made it this way; I've always struggled with this dish, so I don't make it very often." Maybe it's the pan; maybe it's the way the dish is made that makes it difficult. So if you change the pan and change the way you make it, the dish might be a whole lot easier to make. A recipe book is a consultant not a jailer!

Let's look at paper mache. Who says that paper mache must be made from strips of paper? Very young children hate to use paper mache because to them it seems no matter how many tedious strips of newspaper they manage to put on, the thing never looks any different. So if we look at the possibilities, we can see easily what to do and how, and the project of paper mache becomes not only interesting to children, but doable. It's a matter of thinking it through and changing the "It's always the way I've done this..."

Teaching children to see all the possibilities of life is fun, but it's tricky and they have to be on your wavelength. Children are learning to follow directions. They are learning the rules of play, so it can be complicated, but possibilities take a kind of thought that children are very adept to because their desires have not been tired out, and their curiosity about how things work is strong.

For adults, making changes always seems like too much new work, but that's for the negative thinker. Making changes should nearly always lighten tasks, renew the world at hand, and make life a little better. It's a matter of "thinking it through." But all of this takes energy and desire and a sense that things can truly be made better with a little effort.

The hardest part is thinking it through and it begins like this: "What if... and I would need to...and that would enable...and then...." It's a green light for 2010!