The Small Moments Count

I was listening to my good friend, Chris, in his interview on a podcast about near death experiences.  He has made some significant changes in his life for the better and shared a number of things that struck me.

Among them was that he viewed life being about the small things.

Now, the meaning of life may or may not be boiled down to something simple like this.  This comment of his may have also been more about everyday life than the grand idea of life. Regardless, as Chris has often done over the years, he got me thinking.


My reflection here is about that statement.

The reason it struck me was because I find myself looking at the big events and the impactful experiences as the important, life defining moments.  Graduations, weddings, birth of children, new jobs, the list goes on of things that defined my life and its goodness.

But Chris' point is good.  Could it be that the smile of pride on my mom's face at my graduation, my Dad's uncrackable spin that the pouring rain during the graduation ceremony was enjoyable, the first touch of my children in my hands, the look in my wife's eyes when she listened to me say my vows, the fist pumps when I accepted the position at Cranbrook or Linden were actually the stuff of life instead of those experiences themselves as a whole?

Or maybe not even these.

Maybe it is the deep breath I took earlier today.  The cool summer breeze passing around me. The quiet of a winter day lying in the snow. The runner high after a run.  The green leaves filling the trees in the summer.

What makes life....life is probably those moments you assume you will forget that have no major resume type significance.

Another view I have taken over the years has been that the feelings involved with these grand accomplishments or moments are what give life meaning.  So, again, it is less the moment itself and more some aspect connected to it.

Therefore, appreciating these moments or the feelings connected to them are key.

Check out his interview here.  It is worth the half hour or so.

http://www.everydayisasecondchance.com/christopher-hostetler/

The Kids

In an effort to stay present and to give my children more undivided attention, I have had several moments over the past couple days that have been nice. While doing so, I noticed a couple of things:

First, Miss M is reading more and more everyday.  She is at the very beginning of her development so it is mostly sight words, guesses from picture cues, some impressive phonemic awareness and a good bit of memorization from other times the books have been read to her.  The mixture of all these components though are proving to be beneficial as her reading vocabulary grows even more quickly by the day.  

It is exciting to see.  But it is even more exciting to see how excited she gets as she reads and feels our amazement.  She beams with pride and giggles in her unique little Muppet way. I'm so glad we have filled her world with books.

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With A quickly approaching adolescence, there have been a number of frustrating moments.  As a result, I worry that my place in her life is more of an angry authority figure barking demands and directives. So it has been a goal to increase the positives with her.  I can't shy away from the discipline.  It is important that she learns many of these things regarding hygiene, diet, manners, communication and so on as she becomes an independent person.  But I also I want her to know me as a loving and caring person in her life.

An idea I had was to turn off the radio in the car.  I have the luxury of seeing her everyday.  So I'm taking better advantage by purposely having more conversation with her as difficult as that may be for her. I try to keep the conversation about her and show a genuine interest in her.

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A and M are sisters.  They get along like sisters do.  They have had an established relationship before the boy came along.

M and E have grown up together quite literally. They have spent a good bit of time together going to the same baby sitter for three years.  A leaves from time to time to be with her mother, but these two stay together. They, like all siblings, have a love/hate relationship that goes from one to the other and back in the blink of an eye. It is a very common thing.  

In addition, they are close in age while A is more of an outlier being 7 years old when M was born. So M and E are close in this respect as well.

Slowly, I see a relationship building between A, my oldest, and E, my youngest though. The disparity in age means there is not much for them to connect with other than being siblings.  Even though they get along just fine, there is not much overlap.

Until now.

As E develops a love for and an interest in sports, he and A are finding a connection.  A has long been involved in different sports and participates in Special Olympics each year. She is my Buckeye buddy watching the games with me over the years. I taught her to dislike TTUN as an infant.  She sings the fight song, Carmen Ohio and any marching band tune you can think of and play for her.

So, M plays in her grand world of imagination, perfectly content on her own (even preferably) as E and A run around the house kicking a baby ball like soccer feeding off one another, sometimes without words and I can't help but smile inside and play along.

Then it ends with someone mad at another or Mom shutting it down as she tries to have some semblance of peace and serenity.

I am excited to see how my offspring's relationships with one another develop over the coming years.