The other day Lily had her shirt pulled up and was grabbing her belly. After a bit she came over and said, “Mama, I think my stomach is fat.”
I didn’t even look at her stomach, I just looked her straight in the face and said, “Nah, I don’t think so, but you know what is the best part about your body? How fast it can run and how high it can jump!”
“I can run very fast,” she said.
“I know,” I answered. “Show me!”
And off she flew.
Ben has so many fears. Some of them come from being a six-year-old boy, like his fear of the dark. Some of his fears come from being a particularly anxious six-year-old boy, like his fear of elevators.
And then there are the fears that come from his father dying when he was four. His fear of abandonment, his fear of waking up in the morning and realizing someone has gone in the night, his fear of being alone.
Ben and I are so similar and sometimes when I talk about him, I realize half-way through I’m also talking about myself. I’m not afraid of the dark though, which gives me hope that in time he’ll conquer his little-boy fears. The big ones we’ll work on together.
I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.
[…]
Compassion is one of the purest springs of love.
Anne Truitt, Daybook (via the ever-amazing BrainPickings)
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