a robyns nest

With the mind of a child....


It started about a year or so ago. One night, while looking at a waning gibbous moon, Big Bird asked me

"mama, what's wrong with the moon?"

It took a few minutes to get to the root of his question. It turns out that he was concerned about the size of the moon. Apparently it was too small. Apparently in his mind it was supposed to be Full all the time.

I explained how sometimes the moon is big, and sometimes it is small, but that it's always changing size.

"That's okay mama, Ito will fix it."

Ito is one of Big Bird's grandfathers. He is legendary for his ability to fix pretty much anything. I realized that in the world of my then 3 year old, it was completely plausible that Ito would climb up his ladder, use his hammer, and "fix" the moon. At the time I thought, oh how sweet, but didn't think much more about it.

Fast forward a year. Last week, I was trying to distract the kids attention away from something they were not supposed to be doing (beating on each other, if you really want to know). Look! A herd of Velociraptors is walking through the yard.... I point out the window, both kids rush to the door to check it out.

"where mama, I don't see them?"

"there, by the mailbox, don't you see them?" I ask

silence for a few moments.....

"oh. you're pretendin'."

And with that, Big Bird walked away. I'm sure I saw a look of disgust on his face.

It dawned on me in that moment, that in his world, it was completely within the realm of possibility that a herd of flesh-eating dinosaurs was indeed walking through his yard. Where he would have thought oh cool! let's go play with them!, I would have thought oh sh*t....., call 911!

And then a couple of days ago....

"mama? is jelly made from jellyfish?"

I rush to reassure him that jelly is definitely NOT made from jellyfish. Poor child...he must be traumatized....but then, I saw the look on his face. And I could tell that he wasn't worried, he was just looking for clarification. He would have been just as willing to accept "yes" for an answer as "no". Again, it was completely within the realm of possibility that jelly is made from jellyfish. If I had said "yes", he would have said, "oh", and wandered off to keep playing. I would have gagged, and thrown the PB&J in the trash.

Okay, I'll get to my point (and I do have one, I promise). Over the weekend, I was at my twice weekly yoga class. At one point I was standing on my head trying to do this. And it wasn't going well. At all.

I was fighting a bit against muscle fatigue (it was the end of a long class), but honestly, I was fighting mostly against my own mind. ummmm, robyn? what are you thinking? this is impossible! you can't do this! That sort of counter-productive internal dialog that most of us (except maybe Buddha) are familiar with. And then, in less than a second, all of those moments with Big Bird flashed through my mind. And it all came together for me. If I approached this pose with the mind of a child I would be just fine. If I believed that it was well within the realm of possibility for me to stand on my head, balance on my arms and just DO the pose, then it would happen!

Of course, it didn't happen.....by then I was too exhausted. BUT.....I have class again on Tuesday. And between now and then I'm working really hard on changing the pictures and the dialog in my head.

Imagine all the things we could accomplish if we approached challenges with the mind of a child.......