Have you ever had a chance to go look at children play in a park? As they run around, and climb and stretch and chase and kick the ball and laugh and cry and swing and jump and get messy, in every action they teach us important life lessons. It is amazing how when we have an open mind, we can learn from everyone everywhere.
The 5 crucial life lessons that I have learned from 2-6 year olds playing in the park are:
- Bounce back – It is inevitable for kids to fall down as they run around and chase each other. The younger ones who are still a little unsteady on their feet, trip and fall on their own. The older ones may push each other and fall or may run too fast and trip and fall. The reasons they could fall are numerous. Irrespective of how or what caused them to fall, and if they are not hurt bad, most kids generally will pick themselves up and run back to play. Some of them need a little reassurance and patting, but they are soon back to where they were. Similarly in life, they are numerous reasons why we could fall down, we trip on our own mistakes and fall, someone else pushes us down with their words and actions, events and calamities beyond our control get us down too. Irrespective of the reason,sometimes as adults we lose the resilience to bounce back. We sit and cry over our tiny wounds and forget to go back to play. The amount of reassurance and patting that we need is also significantly higher than what we needed as kids. The ability to bounce back and move on is a critical lesson that kids at the playground teach us.
- Acceptance – It is common to see kids who do not know each other and who have just met at the playground instantly connect and start playing together. They begin to climb or race or chase each other and accept the other person instantaneously. They rarely try to find out the name of the other kid, the school , the age, where they live, what are their favorite places to eat, etc before they start playing together. Similarly in life, as adults we meet people day in and day out. But often have reservations to make a connection. We want to know the external facing details about the person – name, where they live, what they do, what connections we may have in common and so on. We fail to make a connection with the true inner spirit of another human.
- Trying new things – A couple of months ago, my almost two year old got bored of our neighborhood playground. He kept asking for a new playground. When i started taking him to a friend’s neighborhood playground, he loved it. It was then that I realized that he was bored of the equipment on our playground as he had ‘mastered’ it in his own way and wanted a new challenge! I was amazed by his attitude and realized that all kids love to try new playground equipment. They do not hesitate to try to climb a structure that they’ve never seen before or balance on a beam that they haven’t done before. As adults, we generally tend to shirk away from new things and new situations. We want to live in our own little comfort zone and fail to embrace new people and new challenges which are actually new opportunities to grow. The fear of failure is so deeply rooted in us that we do not even want to try something before dismissing it and instead dismiss it at the onset itself. Another lesson to learn from kids is to openly embrace a new situation and try it before giving up. Recently, I was given a new project at my workplace and I could immediately sense the fear creeping up inside me, you have never done this before, you do not even know what this is, you are not a subject matter expert in this topic, you do not know what tools to use and so on..I had to breath and quieten my mind and tell myself that I HAVE to try it before I can have judgmental thoughts about it. And I am now happily learning new things and developing new skills in my project.
- Be in the moment – Kids find it so gratifying to play in the playground with equipments and old and new friends, simple because they are IN THE MOMENT. When they are playing that is ALL they are thinking about. Taking in every minute of the time they have and enjoying it thoroughly. As adults, we have lost the capacity to be in the moment. Even when we are doing something, there are hundreds of other stray thoughts running through our brains. For example, recently when i was at the playground watching my kids play, I had thoughts such as I should have put the fish out of the freezer, need to submit the form to school tomorrow, need to pick up milk from the grocery store, call mom and ask her about her uncle, and so on..my brain was whirring non stop with thought after thought. It might be difficult to go back to the one thought kind of mindset that children possess, but it is a matter of discipline and training our minds with techniques such as meditation and yoga.
- Have fun – Kids really enjoy their time in the playground. They have FUN, they enjoy their activities without a care in the world. This is the same kind of fun that we as adults plan for! We need to set time on our calendars a couple of times a year to take a vacation and then have fun. We need to schedule time to go on a girls night out to have fun! Why have we forgotten how simple and easy it is to truly have fun? Doing things that give we enjoy doing, with the people who we love is all that is needed. Even a simple chore such as laundry with the kids can be a fun activity for the entire family. If we view it as a chore, it will remain a chore. A little bit of creativity and spontaneity is all that is needed to make laundry fun. You can play 20 questions with the kids as you toss each piece of clothing into the washer or while folding you could have a small sock ball fight with the kids…you get the idea..Start learning to have fun in everything you do in your life, instead of trying to schedule time for fun.
So go out and have fun on life’s playground.
