Baby Steps

I love watching young kids out exploring their new world, especially when they are learning to walk.  Yesterday, between bright sun and intense thunderstorms, I found their enjoyment enlightening.  Kids cannot see beyond the present.  Their world is simply the next step.  Their awareness is neither muted nor blind; everything within their presence is present.  Nuances we might dismiss are analyzed, touched, and often tasted.  Potential roadblocks two steps out are ignored because they are not within the immediate.  Nothing is left alone; even shadows are interesting!  Each step is important.  Nothing is assumed.  Everything is for learning, growing, and capturing through one of the senses.
 
As an adult I “know better”.  I can rely on wisdom and prior learning.  I believe I should prepare to respond, adapt, and be ready for whatever might happen in the future.  Looking forward and back is as important, maybe more so, than living in the present.  In truth, I need to step aside and become a kid again.
 
There’s something wonderful which only comes by living totally open and ready in the present.  Young kids have it right!  They know life is for living.  They understand there is far more in this moment than in yesterday’s memories or tomorrow’s anticipation.  Yet I find myself falling into the same trap as those before me.  “The princes of Zoan are fools, the advisors of Pharaoh stupid.  How could any of you dare tell Pharaoh, ‘Trust me: I'm wise. I know what's going on.  Why, I'm descended from the old wisdom of Egypt’?   There's not a wise man or woman left in the country.  If there were, one of them would tell you what God-of-the-Angel-Armies has in mind for Egypt.  As it is, the princes of Zoan are all fools and the princes of Memphis, dunces.  The honored pillars of your society have led Egypt into detours and dead ends.  God has scrambled their brains, Egypt's become a falling-down-in-his-own-vomit drunk.  Egypt's hopeless, past helping, a senile, doddering old fool.”  (Isaiah 19.11-15) 
 
Today is a wonderful beginning of something new.  Live now.