We're very busy people. It's not just work that makes us busy. We feel like we need to fill every moment with edification. If we aren't improving -- either ourselves or our child -- then we are wasting time. I'm not making any ground-breaking statements, here, I realize.
So tonight, after bath time, when it was reading and singing time, and The Boy preferred, instead, to sit on the floor between my legs, leaned back against me, enveloped by me, and do nothing else but be still and quiet with his mom for 20 minutes, it was unexpected. We were supposed to spend these last moments doing things together. But it wasn't just that he was content to be still, but that I, at first, was not. I kept asking him if he wanted to sing this or read that. He'd shake his little head "no." No, he wanted to sit with me and be still. At first, I was a little nervous doing nothing, a little impatient. But slowly, I relaxed and I understood that we were, in fact, doing something together: we were being still.
There's a lot to be learned from this little bundle of 18 months of human. He knows what so many of we adults have forgotten: there is pleasure, there is meaning, there is value, there is edification in simply being in the presence of another human being who loves you and whom you love in return. You do not always need an activity to have a meaningful time. You can simply sit with your darling loved one and be still.
