How My Five Year Old Taught Me The Art of Living

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Pablo Picasso

Years ago I watched, fascinated, as my five-year-old painted a scene of dinosaurs attacking one another.  He talked through the whole process as the drama unfolded.  At one point I wanted him to stop.  The images were pretty good and his composition of the piece was well  laid out - but no, the fight continued as more dinosaurs entered the scene and there was bloodshed everywhere.  Before I knew it, the entire canvas was covered in paint from top to bottom and I sighed, "He ruined it."  But he was very satisfied with himself.  It was a great moment of triumph for him.  To this day, I wish I had that attitude - why do I cling to things that don't last when the real joy - what we get to keep - is in the moment-to-moment unfolding?

The Virtue of Patience

If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.  (Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Pooh's Little Instruction Book by A.A. Milne)

What is patience?  Is it a child who doesn't have temper tantrums, who does all the things grown ups say, whose spirit is utterly squashed as she waits to be noticed and listened to with love and empathy?  There is nothing admirable about temper tantrums - how childish - but patience, the virtuous kind, must be born out of self-sacrifice.  The patience that A.A. Milne speaks of comes from the wisdom and compassion that is learned when we start to see life from the other person's point of view.  That's being childlike, not childish.

When I was Wise and Young

"Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

There is nothing as refreshing as the innocence of a child.  What happens to us as we grow older and more jaded with life?  We start to make judgments.  Judgements create walls.  Judgments produce battles.  A child does not judge.  A child expresses needs.  I love the quotation (above).  It says what I feel.  When we grow up we lose something precious, a purity in point of view.