So have you ever watched a child learn to walk? Their first few steps… holding on to anything in sight…the coffee table, chair, mom’s pant leg, dad’s knee… legs wobbling underneath their unsteady bodies. The first step away from the steadiness of holding on…the first step alone. Yeah, you know what happens next… The fall. The sounds of diaper hitting the floor, padding the landing… Hand out, grabbing, searching for something to pull themselves back up. And back on unsteady legs within 4 seconds flat to try again. How many times have you seen this? And how many times have you thought about the fact that these children don’t know any better. They just get up and try again. And again. And again. It’s called fearlessness. It’s what we all had at some point. It was our first huge hurdle in our lives, learning to walk. We fell down, and didn’t question doing it over and over.
So where did we all of a sudden forget how to get back up again? Things happen in our lives and we feel defeated. We fall down, and we stay down. Not only do we stay down, we bring a pillow and blanket and just sleep on the floor. We make it as comfortable as we possibly can down there, since we will be staying for a bit. And only when we are good and ready, and the floor is no longer comfortable, or it’s too cold, we decide to try to get up again. And if we aren’t successful, oh well. Because we left the pillow and blanket there to keep us comfortable just in case.
We fall, we get up. And the true measure of success is not in how many times you fall, but in how many times you get back up. If you make it a point to get up one more time than you fall down, you can be that child again. It’s no different. We think it’s such an amazing feat… it takes such strength and courage. No, sometimes it actually just takes mindless activity. Fall down, Get up again. It’s that simple.
Enjoy the ride.
