Cyndi O’Meara once told me about a thing she and Howard do called the “Rocking Chair Test”.  If they are getting all intense about something, they apply the RCT.  They imagine themselves, ancient and Yoda-like on their verandah, sitting in their rocking chairs, and looking back on their lives.  What will they think of the trials and challenges of today?  Will they be full of meaning and intensity, or will they just be little blips on the radar of life? The RCT, kind of helps you get a bit of perspective.  (Sorry Cyndi, I may have made that Yoda bit up.)

Today I am applying the Rocking Chair Test to our kids, in the wake of Father’s Day, and all things family-like.

What will it be like, looking back on the job we did as parents, and the childhood we helped create for our children?  Will we remember with dread, all the crumbs under the dining table and the tears over broken toys?  Or will we wish, just once, that we could still heal broken things with a big hug and a bit of super-glue?  Will we miss those errant crumbs?

What will we think of the challenges that the kids have faced?  Will we wish we could wipe them away with the flick of an Enjo, or will we love and embrace them for being the very things that made our children stronger, more resilient, more tenacious?

What will we think of the statement “I just want them to be happy?”  Will that still be our mantra, or will we look back with the perspective that only time can bring, and think perhaps there’s more to life than being happy all the time?

I hope that we will rock in our chairs in the afternoon sunlight, one gnarled hand holding another, and say that our children had lives that were happy, sad, funny, boring, joyful, challenging, meaningful, and daring.  I hope they will be curious, take risks, rise to challenges, laugh, play and bask in the sunlight.

I hope we will sit together, on all the Father’s Days yet to come, and say, “We had a good life.”  Sometimes happy, sometimes not, but good.

 …But I won’t miss the bloody crumbs.  I just swept yesterday!

What will you miss?

Wanna come and clean up my crumbs?

I was talking to my clever friend this week, about some things that I wanted to do to my workspace; renovate, get more staff, get more stuff, you know, the things that you usually do.  I was going on and on, and his eyes glazed over, and then he snapped out of it and said, “It sounds like you might be trying to fix something that isn’t really broken. Maybe things are great just how they are.”

WHAT?

I had no words (which is unusual).  So I just said “Mmm” and changed the subject.

But I couldn’t shake it.  I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that maybe I’m trying to fix something that needs no fixing, no intervention.  And maybe I do this in other areas of my life.  Creating jobs and drama and discord where they don’t need to be.  Messing with things that are fine just how they are.

I thought about all the things I try to modify, or move around to make improvements.  I’m always trying to make things and people better.  But what if they are at their best just how they are?

I remembered a time when I was trying to do it to Nathan, to make him happier of course, and another clever friend said, “Leave him alone he’s perfect, and happy just how he is.  He just needs a comfy couch, a cold beer, a good game of footy, a good feed and a good woman by his side.”  I laughed at the time, but the sentiment probably isn’t that far from the truth.  Could it be that it is really all that simple?

I saw on The Book Of Faces today that www.DrDemartini.com said this: “Trying to be what you’re not is tiring, boring and limits your chances of success.  Be honest about what you actually enjoy doing…. Pretending to like like yoga or politics because  you think you should doesn’t help anyone…”

I won’t pretend to like politics right now, but I do often feel a leetle biiit guilty about not doing yoga.

So today, I’m looking at what I am, instead of feeling guilty about all the things that I am not. I do love a list, so I’ll be writing one, whilst I sing along to this little tune from my birth year:

Do what you wanna do… (Because I Love You: Masters & Apprentices)

From The Ashers xx

What do you really want to do or be?

Are you trying to fix anything that isn’t really broken?