Freedom in Each Moment

I have three children--a girl who is 13, a boy who is 11, and a little guy who is 16 months.

I learn from them every day. I pay close attention to them when difficult things happen. The older ones spend a lot of time resisting. When the power goes out (as it did during the recent storms), they have a hard time accepting that their video games are not available, that the food they want may not be possible. And they have a hard time seeing that in many ways, their thoughts have created their suffering. That nothing "bad" is actually happening. It is just different, and the possibilities are different.

The baby, though, seems to roll with things. He gets upset in the moment, as all babies do. But he seems perfectly happy finding things to do within the opportunities that present themselves.

In that way, I think we should try to be a bit more like babies. Open. Spontaneous. Each moment presents many options, and we have freedom to choose from them. When we instead focus on the opportunities that are not possible (those that might not come until the future, for example), all we do is create a prison for ourselves.

It's been said that to enter the kingdom of heaven, one must be as a little child. I think that is true right here, too.

Jeff