aren't we all children? (edited)

While I was meditating last night these thoughts came to me and I know that was not the point of my mediation but wanted to share them here with you.

I overheard Mateo saying no to Theodore, who was trying to put him down to bed. For a second I thought, why does he keep saying no? We know he is tired, so why doesn’t he just lye down? Of course I know the developmental reasons, of finding his own will, learning what he can do, who he is etc. And then it occurred to me that his behavior wasn’t really that different from adults or people in general.

I don’t think you have to believe in God, Spirit, Force or what ever you might want to call it to know that there is something greater than YOU. Perhaps it happened to you, (like it has to me) that you planned out something so beautiful in your mind, but how it actually works out is very different. First you are upset and don’t want to change your plans. But circumstances force you to and you do it. It so often happens to me that afterwards I realize how much better that route was than the one I had planned. Often it also happens that I don’t realize how much more I learned and actually gained from the different direction I took. However one believes this might happen I like to think that we as people often say know, when actually it would be so much wiser to listen to “it”. To listen more carefully and be receptive to guidelines is one purpose of my life. I hope to listen to the direction I need to take, the route I need to travel.

I am reading the book Written by Herself Autobiographies of American Women: An Anthology and came upon this passage which gives a wonderful example of what I trying to put into words above.

"... the one subject I failed in medical school was to be the foundation of my life-work. This was related to a course, during my sophomore year, on "The Normal Child," five by Dr. Annie Sturges Daniel, a pioneer woman physician who is loved and honored by every student who came under her influence. Dr. Daniel's course was an uncharted sea and I had no interest in it; neither had anyone else so far as I could discover except Dr. Daniel's herself.... That was my first, and only, failure. It not only gave a severe jolt to my pride but roused in me a fierce anger at having to take the course again the following year. ... The lectures, I discovered were very fine; the bits of sought-out information most intriguing. As a result, that little pest, the normal child, made such a dent on my consciousness that it was he, rather than my lame knee, who is undoubtedly responsible for the survival of those 90,000 babies the reporter mentioned. THe whole procedure of preventive hygiene which I was later to install in modern child care certainly had its inspiration in that half-year of pique and hard work."

Next time Mateo says no I know to show compassion and gently direct him to what seems right from my perspective, just like I am guided by a Mother bigger than me.