What could make you so excited that if you began
it you could hardly wait to get up in the morning to complete it?
Do that!
I like uninhibited short people who enjoy being told a good story.
This week at a party I sat down with Abigail, my nephew’s daughter, and invented a story for her. Abigail is six. Oddly enough the little girl in the story that I told her was six, and had a dog named Obi, and strangely enough Abigail herself has a dog named Obi, named after Obi Wan Kenobi.
Abigail sat still beside me and listened intently. She loved it when Obi went out on a bike ride with her, riding his “platform bike,” which her dad had invented for him, and Abigail loved it, when after Obi’s disastrous bike crash, he was comforted at home with chicken nuggets that looked like dinosaurs. Chicken nuggets in the shape of dinosaurs are her favorite food.
Later, at the party, I found Abigail’s dad, Roger, and outlined the story to him, how Obi, the adventuresome dog, rode a “platform bike,” and crashed and was dramatically rescued by him from the sewer under the street. Then and there I and gave Roger some pointers on the next installments of the story so he could continue it, if he wanted . The next thing, I think for Obi, the adventure dog to do, is to enter a bike race. After all Roger owns a bike show and has himself raced competitively.
It’s all about timing, when you race, and when you tell little girls stories about racing dogs. Being in the right place at the right time with the right information and “bingo,” a good time is had by two!
When I was in Brazil a few years ago, I told the leaders I was working with that I thought that in institutions such as churches and schools, children should be treated as the entrée, the main course and the absolute, riveting, uncompromising center of it all. I believe that, and practice it. I believe that children should never be babysat or watched; they should be engaged, challenged, centered on and introduced to new things — dogs that ride bikes and such.
I came home from the Brazil sick and weary of not saying enough about the value of children, and so I wrote an article on children and spirituality that was published in a magazine for people who thought the same thing. It lobbied for creating super-meaningful experiences for kids.
I’m still all over this. In the beginning, we must teach children to begin thinking creatively or they’ll grow up to be adults who are blindly fascinated with the same thing, over and over and over and over again.
Know a child?
Then begin a beginning.
Are you a child?
Yes, you are, even if you are an adult you are still a child in some deep and mysterious cabinet of wonders within the psyche that exists hidden in your child-like psyche? Yes, you all are, children!
And because I love you, I want to encourage you, to begin beginning what you have in your heart to begin.
Think about it.
If you don’t begin a new story, and tell it to someone else, then how will you ever end that story so you can begin another one and tell it to another one who is so much like yourself.
So, just begin it and keep going on from there — together.
You’ll like that!
Thrive! 