tomshaggy.com | seeing what you thought you didn't see

Yet another Monday that might as well have just passed me right by.  The chaotic weekend had ended.  The New Orleans Saints were National Champions, not World Champions, because no other country place the freakin’ game except our pals to the North.  We all know though, that they couldn’t even get that right.  My focus today?  My side note from this weekend.  Things we did as children that have completely lost their meaning, for no other reason than growing up.

I was in the mall the other day and I stepped onto the escalator and began walking down the steps and onto the lower floor.  Then it hit me.  Remember when we were kids and we would literally beg our parents to just let us ride the mechanical steps?  They would sometimes oblige, but for the most part they’d drag us down by our arm and our feet dragging across the metal steps.  It was something about the way the light would occasionally show through the cracks that mesmerized our simple minds, like we were searching for another world.

DANGER! This sign meant nothing to us.  Our favorite bouncy ball could be at the bottom of a pile of butcher knives and we’d still dive in head first after it.  The young, nubile mind is forever learning its surroundings and demands stimuli.  As we age and become “wiser” we feel the need to not interact with our surroundings as much.  Ignorance is bliss becomes our motto.  If it doesn’t bother me, I don’t want to know about it.  As I watch a small boy move back and forth, touching the wall and tree trucks that lined the walk way, it made me miss being a kid, more and more.

Our love for our parents.  As children we are constantly loved by our parents.  They are they to teach us how to be respectable adults so that we can one day do the same for our children.  As we grow up we take it all for granted that they will always have that affection.  The truth is, it’s not that they want to forget us or the love us any less.  They are willing to relinquish control in order for us to become the adult we were meant to be and not they one they want us to be.  The more I want my parents and I talk and watch my half brother and sister grow up in a loving home, the more I realize this.

side note:  what does success mean to you?