Wistful and Grateful
I wish that I had the spare energy to dive into my son’s science fair project and exploit it’s educational value. I long for the patience to encourage him to do every step himself. I want him to learn about putting together a complex undertaking and to feel accomplished when it is done. Instead the project lands in a time when I don’t have that energy to spare. The project will get done, but it will not be the educational experience it could have been if I had more to spare.
Ditto my daughter’s history fair project which has a similarly grandiose intention, and which falls on the same week as my son’s science fair project.
I’m grateful that my kids have schools and teachers who offer them amazing opportunities to learn. I wish that we didn’t have to turn down so many. But there is no way that we can do science fair, and history fair, and spelling bee, and geography bee, and knowledge bowl, and after school robotics class, and orchestra, and, and, and… We have to choose. I wish there were some way to transport a portion of these opportunities to other children who have slim pickings in the opportunity department.
I feel guilty for complaining about abundance, even though I know that abundance can cause as many problems as scarcity. I particularly wish this on civil rights day when I think about the words of Martin Luther King, think about how far we’ve come as a society, and how much better we could be than we currently are.
I’m grateful for the people in the past who helped forge the world I live in. I’m grateful for my friends now who are willing to put themselves in the line of fire to forge a better world for my children. I hope that I can be one of them as I’m needed. This is a day for wishes and gratitude.