“All right, Mission Control, we have the enemy.”
I looked up from the school lunch I was packing and smiled. My kid was in the bathroom getting ready for school, and all the drama and intrigue that goes on in his brain every day was spilling out in uninhibited theatre for an audience of one—himself in the mirror. Not a bad way to start a day.
An hour later, I found myself contorted into a seat on a yellow school bus—a designated chaperone on my boy’s school field trip. Around me were groups of kids battling to see who could get the most truck drivers to blast their horns as they drove down the highway. Each time a horn blared, the kids erupted in giggles and sixth-grade style trash talk. “Ooooh! We got him, we got him!” they’d shout, glee splashed across their faces.
We arrived at our destination—a hands-on science center—where I watched 150 kiddos explore and test and try for themselves. Invariably, someone would crack an absurd joke and they’d laugh themselves silly.
All around me…
“Joey, come here!”
“Hey, did you see this?”
“Let me try!”
“Wow!”
“Yeah!”
“Ha!”
Activity and energy and joy and query and….life being lived.
It was a really good day.
Gotta say, these kiddos know something that, most days, I forget. And I’m the loser for it. They know how to be. I know it, too—but more often than not I let myself forget that I know. And, instead, I do.
Now, of course, there can be plenty of do in be. But there’s not nearly as much joy when the be is forgotten.
So, next time you see me in do mode, remind me of the be, won’t you? Or better yet, you’ll be so lost in the be that I’ll just want to come along and play with you: two bees in the be.
See what I did there?
May I live each day telling myself stories in the mirror, urging truck drivers to blare their horns, and exploring the world around me with unabashed curiosity and enthusiasm.
May you be the same.
Do-be-do-be-do…
Be.