I woke up this morning thinking about the difference between who our children are and how they are/how they act.
The first thought that came to my mind was how we try to teach our children to be kind, to be generous, to be patient. And then I wondered if I was contradicting my own movement. If I’m trying to make my child be that type of person, am I trying to control who she becomes? It would seem that way.
But on the other hand, perhaps being kind and patient and generous isn’t about who they are so much as how they are in the world. After all, people who are not patient people can learn to practice patience. People who are not inherently generous can be inspired to practice generosity. Perhaps our job as parents isn’t to make them into generous people but to teach the people they already are to practice generosity. To encourage them to practice kindness. To inspire them to practice patience.
Or maybe the best gift we can give them is the awareness that they have a choice. They can choose what they want to practice. It may not feel like it comes naturally. It may not be easy. But they can always choose.
I have learned a lot about myself in the last four years. I am on a constant journey of discovering who “me” is. And as I learn, I find things that I am grateful for in myself. Passion. Awareness. And I find things that I wasn’t aware of. Desire for control. Impulsiveness. These things are part of who I am, but sometimes I let them control how I am. And the outcomes are sometimes unpleasant for myself or those around me. Realizing that I didn’t have to resent those parts of me was an enormous gift. I could acknowledge that I am impulsive. And then make a conscious choice to be thoughtful instead.
If I could give my daughter only two things in all the world, I would give her the curiosity to discover WHO she is, and the awareness to see that she can always choose HOW she is.
Lucky for me, she was already born with more curiosity than I could ever give her.