“Okay, girls, it’s time for bed,” I make the dreaded announcement to my Christmas-pajama-clad daughters.
“But MOM! We haven’t even started playing yet! We just finished setting up!”
Since they’ve been at it for well over two hours, I can’t understand how this is possible. It is, however, a pattern I’ve noticed with my children. They spend so much time “setting up” that they hardly ever get to actually play anything.
Now, I could take this one of two ways. I could feel sorry for my kids that they don’t spend sixteen hours a day “playing ponies” or paper dolls (fourteen of those hours for setting up, of course), or I could just be glad that they enjoy the setting up.
Decking the halls, trimming the tree, making the presents, wrapping the gifts… my kids somehow inherently know that “getting there is half the fun.” They have unknowingly adopted this mindset as their life’s philosophy.
The excitement, the build-up, the waiting, the anticipation of birthdays, parties, sleepovers, vacations, traveling, Christmas – life’s a journey, not a destination. Maybe I listened to too much Aerosmith during my pregnancies, but somehow my girls get it.
Somehow, they’ve missed the problem that I’ve always had: High expectations lead to big disappointments. Over the years, I’ve learned that the lower my expectations, the better off I’ll be.
A pre-marriage book that my husband and I read advised us to go into our marriage with very low expectations. “The lower, the better,” it told us. And Ben Franklin once said, “Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” Funny, maybe, but there’s a bit of ironic wisdom there too, isn’t there?
But my girls spend their entire lives expecting. Waiting. Dreaming. Anticipating.
A lot of times, things don’t turn out the way they had hoped. Maybe the tea party wasn’t exactly what they expected. Maybe the long-awaited trip to the theater downtown was boring. Maybe their picnic got rained out. Maybe The Nutcracker was sold out. Maybe Santa got confused on the difference between Fairy Friends Barbie and Fairy Secret Barbie (it does happen, believe it or not!).
They don’t water down their dreams, though. They don’t protect themselves by pretending that they aren’t excited. And strangely enough, even when things don’t go their way, they aren’t disappointed very often. They smile, dwell on the good parts and forget about the bad parts. What a way to go through life!
I constantly learn things from my children. This Christmas I’ve learned that maybe I should spend more time enjoying the process of my life. I need to do more "setting up" myself. Maybe it’s not my great expectations that cause me to be disappointed (or not) in the end. Maybe it’s my own attitude and how I choose to deal with the gifts (and gag gifts) that life sends my way.
-from my 12/18/11 article for www.mentorpatch.com
