sleeping over The thrill of summer’s first ice cream The crunch of
fall’s withering leaves
The starkness of winter’s bare cold
The smell of the dough baking as we pass the pizza shop The untold
secrets within a library’s walls
The glee of finding a lost penny.When your children learn to revere such moments, gone is the
madness for more, flashier, bigger. They grow into adults who are able to
focus their attention on what’s before them as opposed to what isn’t.
Then, free of your expectations, they enjoy their ordinariness and reach
for expectations that spring from their own center.THE FALLACY OF THE OVERPRODUCTION OF LIFE
When we aren’t solidly grounded in our own essence, we tend to
compensate by creating an external life in which just about everything
becomes a “big deal.” Lacking an adequate sense of our intrinsic value,
we feel a need to exaggerate, bend over backwards, and overanalyze.
For instance, our child gets lice and we act as if a tsunami has
occurred. They receive a bruise and we rush to medicate, often way
overdoing it. They earn a C and we call in a tutor. Another kid hits them
and we’re ready to take this kid’s family to court. They tell us a lie and
we go ballistic. They are bored, so we buy them more gadgets whose
entertainment value will be as limited as the ones they already have.
They turn thirteen and we throw them a party fit for a wedding.
Believing that more is better, bigger is brighter, and expensive is greater