Barriers

Day 26

16th June 2009

This is a wonderful creation which my daughter made in playgroup today. She came running out to me with it at home-time, proudly shouting, "look what I made today, Mummy, it's a wall!". Her pride in her work made me smile, and the way she ran to me to show me made me feel proud that she wanted to share her excitement with me.

I was excited for her, because, like most children, she was living in that very moment, in that space, with no barriers in front of her to stop her from just "being". Most children in the UK don't worry about money, relationships, jobs, home, responsibilities, what to wear, where the next meal is coming from; they have their whole future ahead of them, but all they can see is what is straight there at the end of their cute little button noses: tea time, homework time, bed time, going out to play time, sweeties time, tv time, etc etc - and that is what life should be like for a child.

As an adult, to be living in the moment, with no other distractions to take you into another space, to actually live that moment in time, to feel what's around you, to experience the emotion of that time, to truly LIVE, is a difficult, if not impossible, concept for most grown-ups to grasp. OK, so going to the supermarket to buy a loaf of bread isn't exactly the high point in a lifetime, as it's a practical, seemingly mundane task of going to the shop to buy food so as to eat, in order that you don't feel hungry anymore. It's a means to an end.

But if, for example, you consider that we are lucky enough to be living in a country where food is plentiful, a large amount of the population have enough money lining their pockets to be able to buy a loaf of bread and a whole lot more besides; and compare it to another country, for example, Zimbabwe, where to buy a loaf of bread involves standing in a long queue with a bag full of notes just for the bread alone. These people must be truly living in that moment, where they don't know if there will even be any bread on the shelf when they finally walk through the doors into the supermarket, let alone part with the huge pile of cash and leave with a small chunk of dough to take to their family. To be living in the moment, is to survive, for them.

What I am clumsily trying to convey in this post, is that we have barriers around us which impede or prevent us from experiencing the moment in its fullest sense. We have too many thoughts tracking through our minds to clearly see what's around us, so we don't feel the true nature of the experience at the time.

Next time you are doing a chore, try to see something seemingly mundane through the eyes of a child, to see if you can truly be living in that moment.