81 of 642 Things to Draw
happiness
72/642
The Real Deal
The older (and wiser) I get, the more I realize that my role as a parent is primarily to help preserve my children’s sense of wonder, self-confidence, and love of self and world.
I was raised to worry. I know they meant well, but it’s the worst thing to teach your child. It fosters anxiety and self-doubt.
Do One Thing at a Time
Don’t multi-task. You cannot possibly be total in what you are doing. Being total in what you are doing is the essence of presence…of true joy.
My Life Right Now
They’re driving. They’re on the go. They’re independent and happy.
Motion
As you pray, move your feet.
African proverb
Happy Thanksgiving
“Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.” – Henry Ward Beecher.
Home
Maybe it’s not so important for you to pursue your passion because you have to be great at it…but perhaps it is important because it will lead you to your tribe.
Decide
Every time I come home and walk through my door, my pitbull-mix dog Opal runs to greet me. She has done this every time I’ve walked in the door since I adopted her on February 16, 2013. Every. single. time. She loves me, this is true, but she also does not tire of routine or sameness. She doesn’t get jaded or bummed out because she’s been missing me all day.
I walked into a bank today and the young man who greeted me was very enthusiastic about everything: greeting me, asking me if I needed help, guiding me to my appointment, and then going on to greet others. I later learned that he just started working at the bank. Do you remember being new at your job? I do. I loved everything about my day. Nothing could get me down. Everything excited me.
Buddhists have a saying: “Happiness is a choice, not a result.”
Sometimes our most important challenge is to keep life new and choose to not be jaded by things.
I started to lose my way when I learned that our school superintendent did something (it has not been revealed to the public) and will be fired and be paid out several hundreds of thousands of dollars. We just passed a tax hike for education. I’ve been pretty down about it, thinking that certainly, the next expenditure for education will not pass because of this. I got angry thinking about all those tax dollars going to this one woman and not to the thousands of students in our district. But I can’t worry about that. I need to choose to be happy because I have students in front of me now.
I am more productive when I’m happy than when I’m frustrated/disappointed/sad/angry.
180
As my daughters grew to be teenagers, a chasm started to grow between the older one and me. I would “advise” her to practice her violin, do her homework and I would check her grades online. As soon as one of her classes started to drop, I’d pounce on her.
This, I believed, was motherly love.
She started to distance herself from me. When we spoke, it quickly escalated with me on offense and her on defense. She started to stay out later and later and we rarely talked nicely to each other. I asked myself over and over, When will she grow out of this? And then I found electric cigarette paraphernalia in her room. I freaked out. The younger one asked, “Don’t you see why she’s acting out?”
Wake up call!
One night, I decided I would do a 180. I would do the opposite of everything I had been doing. Before, I was completely hands-on. Now, I would be hands-off. I wouldn’t ask questions or tell her what to do. I would just listen.
And when was the last time we had fun together? I decided we would go on a date – just the two of us – once a week. It didn’t have to be fancy, just as long as we had 1:1 time together.
After she put aside her suspicions (and why wouldn’t she be suspicious of my motivations?), we started to go to a coffee shop every Sunday before she went to work as a server in a Thai restaurant. She would tell me about rude customers, her rude boss, good coworkers, and not-so-good coworkers. She told me about her friends, about how she would miss them when they went off to college and she would be a senior in high school “all alone.” I didn’t give advice or suggestions. I just listened.
I learned more about her on one date than I had in the six months before my 180.
Gradually, we joked together again. She opened up. “Mom, I have something to tell you.”
I braced myself.
“Right now, I’m getting an F in math.”
“OK.”
“OK?”
“Do you know what to do to raise it?”
“Yeah.”
“I trust you don’t want an F and that you will do something about it if you care. If you don’t, you won’t. No big deal.”
She walked away completely flabbergasted.
She got that F up to a B on her report card with no additional words or actions from me.
Now, she is three months from 18 and I am completely confident she will be just fine – not just in school or college – but in life. She has a great head on her shoulders. She’s a people-person and completely capable.
And she knows she can come to me at any time.
Kismet 