Day 39-READY OR NOT, HERE I COME!

Day 39

I don’t always take the time to play with my kids. I feel like most of my life is spent on efficiency mode. Especially on weekdays when all the minutes of the day are accounted for.

Last night, I was alone with my 6-year-old daughter. One of her homework required playing cards. After she had finished, she asked me if we could keep on playing. Obviously, it was a school night, so my first reaction, as a very responsible parent, was to look at the time to make sure it wasn’t too late for us to begin another game.

As I was trying to think about which game we could play, I suddenly had a flash. I began building a card castle. I used to love doing this when I was a child. I remember spending hours trying to build it as high as possible, half folding the cards to make the construction more solid. Obviously, my daughter quickly got involved. She too was trying to develop her own technique and, every time the castle would come crashing down, she would burst into a hearty laughter.

It made me think of how as a child; I couldn’t wait to grow up. Why in hell did I think adulthood was such an exciting period of life, I don’t know. All I do know is that if we were able to view life from a child’s perspective, we would probably be able to access happiness more easily.

Last weekend, we were in the country with my brother-in-law and his family. The children were outside the whole weekend working on an incredible project: they were building a tipi. They took fallen branches, placed them, bent them, cut them, tangled them and created an impressive structure that they covered with leaves. When they had completed their endeavour, they placed little pieces of wood inside the tipi to sit on and enjoyed an afternoon snack.

What did we, mature grown-ups, do? We enjoyed nature: we walked in the mountains, breathed fresh air, and marvelled at the scenery. And then we cooked, cleaned, meditated, did some yoga, took warm baths. Basically, we performed our normal duties and added some activities to try to get rid of all our accumulated stress.

Looking at both sets of life, I wonder if we wouldn’t benefit from sometimes playing like children: rolling down a hill on our stomach, building a snowman, skipping rope, playing elastics, drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. Do these activities have a purpose? No! And this is why we should indulge in them and make them part of our HAPPY lives!