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Through My Eyes... |
A Parent’s New Year’s Resolution
Jan 04, 2009
By Cornelia Spelman
It may seem alien to make a New Year's resolution that doesn't require us to strive for something, but, instead, to relax into what we already have.
In this New Year, that opportunity lies before us. Each day we have the opportunity to "be" instead of to "strive." From those who have been bereaved, we have the opportunity to learn that it is not possessions, money, places, or exotic experiences that children need to be happy, but that moment when the beloved comes home.
We have the most extraordinary power to bestow upon those we love, especially our children, that very treasure lost to others forever--our presence and attention. Regardless of what we don't have, or what we think we need to get, or what we believe we deserve--what we actually have, now--being together--is the most precious and irreplaceable thing of all.
And yet--in our eagerness to improve ourselves and to better our children's lives, we may not even be aware of all that we have, of all that is right in front of us. What adjustments might we need to make to bring about this awareness and appreciation? In order it live in the present, it can help to imagine a distant future. In five years, where will your children be, and how will you have spent that time? In ten years? Childhood, one learns after one's children have grown up, turns out to have been a very short time. Do we want to spend it being over-busy, overtired, or elsewhere? Or do we want to, right now, go find our children, put our arms around them, read them a story, listen to them, look at them? We can, today and every day of the New Year, give them the most important thing they could ever have--our time, our attention, our simple presence.