If you have kids, have you ever heard someone tell you this “Embrace your kids as much as you can, because before you know it, they will grow up and move out, and you will be wishing for these moments with your kids…” – something of these lines. Usually, it is old grandparents or parents with older kids who tell this to others. I say they have completely missed the point and are telling others how to miss the point too.
You see, when kids come along, no matter whatever you tell yourself, fundamentally they come along as an accessory to your life – An accessory, whether planned or unplanned. If you’ve planned, then an accessory you’ve planned with the hope that will enhance your life.
The magic of this accessory is; when they are little they need all your attention and support to do things and to simply survive because they are not fully capable. So you just cannot ignore them. You must attend full-on to them. The magic lies in being fully on with them. This magical accessory has come along and unlike never before in your life, it is forcing you to be fully on to life — whether you like what they are doing or not. It has come along to show you how to be joyful, how to play, how to be silly, how to be yourself, how to break free from your learned nonsense, and to teach you how to take care of someone beyond you, before you. All of which you may have forgotten or forced to forget by your grown-ups.
More importantly, this magical accessory is here to show you how, with tremendous force, to be fully on to life, to this moment, to the life outside of you experienced intensely within you in this very moment away from all your psychological drama. An accessory you’d hoped would enhance your life, is indeed enhancing your life in ways you never imagined.
This magical accessory is creating an amazing opportunity for you to reconnect back with this realization, with this understanding, with this awareness, with this attention so powerfully.
If you are too buried in your memories, you will miss this wonderful opportunity. What a shame it would be. Then you will go on telling silly messages to other parents.
If you are wise enough to realize this and grab this lesson, it will live with you forever and you will be the only one too busy intensely living and experiencing this moment joyfully. You will not have the time to replay past memories with little kids, because you have the capability and know-how to live this moment intensely. If you have learned that lesson, kindly taught by those magical accessories, in the future, whether you have an accessory in your life or not, you will know how to live life joyfully with intensity. To live life intensely means, you never feel like anything is missing in life. To live life intensely means, you will live to your full potential doing what needs done joyfully.
So do not get too lost in trying to embrace this moment, and “yes” kids will grow up, if they don’t that’s a problem. Instead of all this, pay attention, see if you can see the lesson kindly taught once and for all — a lesson that was forgotten, a lesson that is worth learning for this life to be rich.