Catching the winds

While sitting on the beach yesterday with my 8 month old baby watching her reach out with her hands against the wind that blew up the beach, looked very much like she was trying to catch the wind. Innocently she opened and closed her hands, and moved with intent, all the while laughing and talking. She continued this for a while and only putting her onto the sand, did she stop and change focus.

It made me think that often catching the winds is real in most peoples lives. We reach out to grab “things” that we just don’t understand, we think that “things” can just come to us and are there for the taking. But in reality if the thing is simply an opportunity it may not be what it appears to be, it might not be ‘catchable’. Whilst it looked liked fun, catching the wind, those of us with the experience could see her attempts and we laughed. We knew she wouldn’t catch anything, but we let her do it anyway.

Most of life is like this, those with the experience simply let us fail in our own time and come to the conclusion on our own. But is that fair? How do we say to the child, its’ the wind, you can’t catch it. She doesn’t know what the wind is and yet she can’t see it, but wants to catch it anyway, maybe find out what it is. Is telling her to stop trying to catch the wind stoping her from developing? Could it create with in her the idea that she is a failure, it might I think if I continued to tell her what will fail. But then should I leave her to catch the wind and learn for herself?

I think it is it better to allow her to discover failure for herself, while guarding her against dangers that she cannot see. In this way she catch attempt to catch all the winds, but learn what is pointless and begin to narrow her opportunity selections.