When we are little kids, we are drawn to grownups who haven’t lost their capacity for childlike wonder and enthusiasm. That enthusiasm and our desire to connect with it means that what we learn most easily is what our parents are most enthusiastic about — be it fly fishing or football, baking or Broadway shows. Those things we learned from that place of easy joy are the things we will always hold closest to our hearts.
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Never Too Late
As a child, it was my mother who taught me "right" from "wrong" by putting the literal fear of God into me, and being the gatekeeper to what was good and permissible and what was not. As a child, though I bridled agains her will, it was often just easier to do it her way . . . for both my father and for me.
I was a child of immense enthusiasms. The ones she approved were usually the ones that most resembled her own. The ones she did not -- the messy ones, the inexplicable ones, the ones that smacked too much of privilege -- those became our battlegrounds. But my greatest enthusiasm -- my love for my father -- was the one enthusiasm we both fully shared.
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Genius in the Making
It has been one of those mornings, in one of those weeks, in one of those months, in one of those l-on-n-g stretches of times when everything feels like a challenge.
Fortunately, if we've been alive long enough, we come to learn that during times like this -- when almost every single thing feels like a difficult life lesson -- we must trust in the process, no matter how long and winding and precipitous it may feel. Knowing that we are being taught EXACTLY what we need to learn. I am shown that over and over again. . .
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