delight

This morning I decided that today was going to be about delight.
The delight my children experience in their present moments, the delight they bring to me to show me in their outstretched hands, and the delight they give me unintentionally.

Here's their day - driven entirely (without any interference, suggestions or ideas offered) by their own interests and whims. By their own delight.

Interpretive socialization. Everyday conversations, Mama's helping babies, evaluating and expressing friendship.

Fantasy play.

Fiddling. Playing with textures, shape, and resiliency.

Inventing with imagination and opportunity - Cranberry pie.

Play. Coming up with (strange) things that children have always done since the beginning of time - On Their Own.

Laughing and chasing Daddy with true glee.

Re-enacting Earth History - with its ponds and rivers and volcanoes and bones and herbivores and carnivores and quicksand. Because she can. Because she knows lots about dinosaurs.

Exercising his body and his Independence. Which of course means by himself, without his Mama nearby. Because he is cautious and capable. And just a little grown up. (We're in the Earliest Stages of this new development.)


Music. Experimenting, fluctuating, and noticing one's voice, and vibrations.

Play and cooperation with friends. Which means communicating one's feelings and wishes and dislikes successfully and peacefully. (with no help from anyone.)
Reading together, building together, dancing together, running together. Helping and showing and teaching. Expressed honestly and authentically and accepted for what it is.


None of these things are extraordinary. None of them are even very shiny.
We might suppose that having such a day accomplished nothing at all.

But when we think that the purpose of "education"* is for one to prepare and enable oneself for a happy and fulfilled life, we can suppose that experimenting, touching, tasting, reveling, basking, sharing, rolling over, leaping into, and falling in love with the world around us might just be a grand way to educate ourselves. Because we are joyfully getting intimate with the way things work.
And the delight that life offers us.

Which of course is the whole point.

* "ed - u - ca - tion  /ˌɛdʒʊˈkeɪʃən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ej-oo-key-shuhn]
1. the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life." (according to dictionary.com)