SO the other day I am lying on the floor stretching and my little daughter comes over and sits next to me. She becomes very inquisitive in her looks and asks “ when were you born daddy?”
I replied “you mean my age?”
“ No what year ?”
“ ah ok 1975”
To which I got an eye roll, and then followed by “ omg I do not mean to be rude but that is so old. I cannot even count, that was like last century”
“ Yes I am glad you know that it was last century, but it isn’t THAT old”
“ No daddy you are like super old”
Gives me a hug and walks off, leaving me to continue to foam roll out my legs and joints that by now are feeling like they are several centuries old.
Yet it got me thinking. From her vantage point and her time on this planet, my age feels like an eternity. She is a 21 century kid not like me apparently who is older than dirt. We each see things and process them from our own eyes and our level of understanding.
It is like reading a literary author from antiquity without any understanding what they were writing. The words have to fall upon that level of understanding and evolution even if it an “out of time” context book. These days children will never know what a disk drive is or how a fax machine works, or what is a typewriter or a cassette deck or heaven forbid a gramophone or a record player looks like. It is not in their nature to understand these things because from their vantage point these were “ before they time” or rather they are out of time with these items.
I am old. I own it. Regarding her comments my interpretation was simple. She was playing out the antiparticle of me that thought I was young enough to do all these endurance sports ( which also included a regimen of stretching). She just grounded me and pushed me to feel if I had any shadows about getting old. I did not feel that I did. I feel certain that she was the universe playing out its cosmic joke to see if I would get triggered.
We are asked to See everything from our vantage point yet also see things from the opposite point of view as well as the whole picture. This is the state of balance that we seek.
Thank you dear daughter for this lesson and I cant wait to embarrass you at every turn in life…. My own joke and authority of being a dad.
……………….
I love you
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