Elevator Thinking
Is your life full of ups or downs? Does it Matter?
I’ll admit it, my life is full of ups and downs. For some reason though that is not what I want for my adult children. I want their lives to be full of positive experiences.
Of course, this isn’t realistic. If I know about my own life experiences, I can see rationally that they too are likely to experience difficulties and challenges. Some of their challenges will be as difficult as my own teenage experience when job hunting, but I hope not as traumatic.
Actually, it never occurred to me how my own mother might feel knowing I was once abducted.
Why then do I want to shield my own adult children from these somewhat negative experiences as adults? When they were children, I used to take them to experience music, drama, ballet, travel, sports, writing competitions, the theatre, horse riding, canoeing. In all these places there are ups and downs, and challenges. You don’t always win, and sometimes the experiences are tough and competitive.
And besides, didn’t I learn from my own difficult experiences (although they were very different), how to behave and how the world operates?
Lately, I have come to realise that shielding adult children from experiences is not the right way to conduct yourself as a parent. For one thing, this is an impossible task. For another, growth only happens when you take risks and experience life.
If I could give you an analogy; something from my own experience. I once got myself stuck in a shop. I couldn’t find my way out and tried to go down an upward escalator. It was difficult. Better to go with the flow and let life carry you forward.
I started on the ground floor and went up. Without the benefit of being at the bottom how could I reach the top?
When you get on an elevator, at some point you will have to get off and come down. That is life. It’s full of ups and downs. Sometimes things we need to know and realise are staring us in the face, or come to us when we answer prompts.
Written in response to Jason’s visual prompt 6:
I have recently read this amazing story and would like it to get more readers:
