Desire

Today my son excitedly brought out his shoes after many months of wearing his Sorels here in the still-snowy kootenays.  He carefully began untying the laces of the double-striped black walking shoe I was fortunate to scoop up at the local free store.  He stops to examine the two white stripes on the side, running his fingers along the leather with interest.

"Mom," he says, "I like shoes that have THREE stripes."

I smiled and mirrored back to him,  "You like the look of three stripes on shoes."

He nodded, pleased to have been heard.   "One day I would like to have shoes with three stripes!"

"It is possible." I reply.

The conversation ends as we happily slip on and tie up the double-stripe shoes.  He seems very content at this point with two stripes and the knowing that shoes with three stripes could perhaps grace his feet in the future.

Desire is beautiful and lives in us all. Without desire, we would not be creators in a realm of infinite possibility.   Supporting our child in his desires may be done in a healthy fashion through tuning-in and feeling the desire alongside him.

Imagine laying on the grass beside your child and staring at the clouds passing by for quite some time.  Glorious wonder fills your mind as you watch the winds blow the clouds and perhaps notice the turning of the Earth.  Your child launches a rocket of desire - she states that she would like to look down at the Earth from space some day.  In your relaxed, open, wondrous state you can totally envision this desire through your child's eyes - the hugeness of being in that powerful, breathtaking place.  You feel positive energy about this desire and greet it with deep appreciation and understanding.

When we support our child's desires in a loving fashion, we can greet all of her desires with appreciation and understanding.  We can release our evaluation of the desire and just allow it to "Be".   Being mindful of potential fear-based thoughts that can enter our head and create negative energy will help us to instead choose more loving and supportive ways of communicating.  I could have "read-in" to my son's desire in a number of ways and responded from a fear-based place:

"You want shoes with three stripes?  What's wrong with these??  These shoes are perfectly fine."

"Oh, two stripes are WAY cooler than three stripes.  You know why? .... "

"Well I just got these shoes and we're really lucky to have found these, so just appreciate what you have, mister, because I'm not going out to buy you shoes just because they have three stripes instead of two!"

If I'd taken a route similar to the above, I would have been squashing his legitimate desire, convincing him out of his dream and insinuating that it's invalid.  Small of an example as this is, the above responses are disempowering him in that moment.  If I am unconsciously communicating in this fashion on a regular basis, these seemingly trivial communications add up in the long run.

In addition to desire-squashing and invalidation, I would also be teaching my son many complex things that I might not truly want to convey through the above responses: I'd be teaching him to make assumptions and to jump to conclusions; I'd be instilling in him views of scarcity;  I'd be conveying the message to him that others' desires are more appropriate for him than his own; and, I'd be demonstrating ways to manipulate people out of their personal desires.

Keeping the desire alive in your child means putting yourself "in his shoes" as much as possible in order to truly connect to and understand his desire.  When your child is desiring something you may wish he wasn't, put yourself on the grass staring at the clouds in that moment, and ask yourself - really, what's so bad about that desire?  I can see how he'd want that!

Now you're tuned-in to the infinite creativity alive in your child.