Patience is a virtue, Silence is golden

Jonah's favorite video right now is Songs from the Station, Thomas the Train of course. One of the songs is called 'Patience is a virtue', a good lesson for kids and their parents alike. Tired kids and parents have even less patience and it is more of a challenge to stay calm and cheerful when mommy has to go somewhere and the two-year old is tugging on mommy's pants yelling "no!"

Ultimately, I do have to go and don't like to be late for appointments, but I also realize that living in the moment sometimes means addressing what is the most pressing at the moment, the most important things are people, not things, or timelines, or even appearances.

So, I may seem like a flake, maybe a lot, but perhaps people will understand and adjust their image of me from someone who is constantly late, to someone who puts the needs of herself, and her family first, in order to have a happy harmonious household, and therefore is more productive overall. I hope so, but if not, oh well!

Although I am far from fully understanding or practicing this, I love the idea of living fully in the present moment. Not allowing the past or future to dictate my current state of action or being.

I think many people, including myself, have this sense of anxiety ingrained in them. We must be thinking ahead, about what could happen in order to help it or prevent it, or we must reflect on the past in order to be sure we didn't miss something, there is always something available to worry about in this mind-state.

When I try to experience this ideal, using silence, being fully in the moment, without thinking too much, it is very hard. But I see my little ones, and they do it without even trying.

If I ever do get to that place it feels so good! It's that feeling that Jonah must have when he is walking through the wind, jumping in the puddles. Or Jasper when he is cracking up about something that for no apparent reason is hillarious to him. Just being.... feeling the wind, being part of the water running down the gully, and the drops of rain dripping from the trees. Just being part of nature, which we really are, is so natural and organic.

I hope to give my children plenty of chances to feel this, and live in their bodies. They have the right to celebrate who they are without having to perform or live up to adult expectations.

That is where our patience is a virtue. We are the ones who give the examples by acting gracefully, using kind voices and words that reflect our intentions.

Jon said he had a realization, which is appropos to this line of thought. He said that children never really listen to their parents, so we shouldn't expect them to when they are teenagers (a time when they usually rebel), because they never did listen to us. What they do is imitate us. They are reflecting what we give them, not through our words but our actions.

How do we talk to the other adults in our lives? How do we deal with unpleasant surprises, or difficult situations? How do we show our love to each other, how do we take care of each other, of ourselves? All of these actions and attitudes are input to the children, we can talk until we are blue in the face but essentially they will do as we do, not as we say.

"Allow the child to just be without wanting to change them." Whatever is going on, allowing space for the yelling, the tantrum, whatever it may be. This is a message from the author of The Power of Now. I have a lot to learn from him.

Using silence is my next challenge. Seeing if things will work out even if I don't pipe up with the answer immediately, or try to correct or change things as they are going on. I know I do this unconsciously, and it's annoying to the people around me, but really I do it thinking I am helping, that I am preventing some future problem, but really I guess that often I am creating more strife by just interjecting when I could just be silent. This is a difficult task for me. So I decided that even though I'm not officially Catholic (I was raised by two former Catholics, and married one too, so it's my default religion) I will try to participate in the practice of Lent. I decided to give up talking. Obviously I can't always be silent, but I am trying to decide when talking is really necessary. I am not very good at this, as my very patient husband will attest, but I'm not giving up. Writing here is a good way for me to get out my thoughts and feelings without talking everyones heads off.... so thanks for listening!

I am interested to see how being silent eventually pays off, maybe my kids (and husband) will copy me and it will result in less whining all around! Let's hope :)

Anyway it's more fun to hear what everyone else has to say, especially when they say such cute things as "mommy, you need a kiss!"- yes, I do.