Last month Amos turned FOUR. Yes! FOUR! And Joel will be entering primary school in about eight months. It’s an incredibly bizarre sensation for me to be remembering my first day of school—the ketchup that tasted like sweet sauce and the stationery store that always smelled of fresh exercise books.
What do you remember?
The years go by quickly—in the snap of a finger, the blink of an eye. When we’re in it the journey felt slow and arduous. When we’ve gone past a good part of it we look back and we see so much. The cycle goes on—the children grow—we age. And we want to be looking back at each stage and feeling glad over most of the things we’ve done.
So we all try our best to strive and do right.
The week before Amos’ birthday, we had a selection of cakes to choose from and Amos wanted one with Nemo on it. We thought it couldn’t have been more apt because, well—in case you haven’t noticed, one of Nemo’s fins is smaller than the other, so Nemo has a disability too!
(Although we think it’s because the two boys were in a Nemo-frenzy that week after watching the film five times over)
That film, as with many, is fiction. But its depiction of the human spirit (albeit with a fishy cast) is real. We want to tell our kids how important it is to study hard and get a good job and earn a good living and all that. But the process is tough, competition is stiff. They might not succeed in the way they’d want to. They might end up at crossroads, and having to face trials, as we all did.
So before their turn comes, it’s up to us to show them how.
Dory, the amnesiac blue tang in the film Finding Nemo, unwittingly does just that.
Dory: It’s time to let go! Everything’s going to be all right.
Marlin: How’d you know? How’d know something bad isn’t going to happen?
Dory: (A moment’s thought) I don’t!
They let go.
The message? Forget the baloney about science giving you all the answers and man making his own fate. More often than not, it’s the right faith in the right places that takes you a long way.
Dory: Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, (sing-song voice) swimming, swimming, swimming…
The message? A simple and powerful solution when the tides of life flow against us. That’s really all we’ve got to do, and we could do it singing.
In time Amos and Joel will have to face tribulations that come their way. The old truisms aside, what message do we hope to teach them that can be simpler than this?
We go on swimming, breathing, because tomorrow the sun will rise.
And who knows what the tide will bring?
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
2 Timothy 4:7
P.S. If the concluding lines sound familiar to you, they were uttered by Chuck Noland in the film Cast Away. Same message told in another lovely way.