My daughter turned nine yesterday.
While talking to her on the telephone, I mentioned to her that it was the last single-digit birthday she’d ever have, and that seems to have given her pause. She thought about it a bit, then finally told me that it didn’t really matter, she was just happy to be the age she was. That she’d worry about ten when she got there.
We spend so much time preparing our children to survive and compete in the ‘real world’ that we sometimes forget to let them be children. We do this because we are following the lessons of our parents – bold, driven people from a generation so large that everything was a competition.
Because our generation is so small, the lesson is a bad one for us. We don’t have to compete with each other, and we can’t compete with our entrenched elders. But we still measure ourselves against the success yardstick of our parent’s generation. And we’re beating the same erroneous message into the minds of our children.
Today I’m not going to worry about tomorrow or yesterday. Today I am going to happy to be where I am.
Wow! beautiful!
Thanks for bringing a smile onto my face today, when I was remarkably frustrated with some things.
And congratulations to your daughter for having completed nine years in this place! I hope she goes on to bring many more smiles to people and to herself! :)