Climbing a tree

There is a good 45 min time difference between the off times of my eldest and her sister. Sometimes we like to while away time at a grocery store piling useless stuff in the trolley and then returning most of it at the checkout counter. At other times, when I am in no mood to negotiate on ins and outs, we head straight to the school and kill our time in the car. During one such instance, my kids discovered the game of climbing trees. One large tree has vines hanging from it and my kids love to swing from it. They haven’t watched Tarzan yet, so they are more imaginative in being whoever or whatever they want to be. Today they decided to explore a different tree. This one is fairly young, not too tall, a thinner trunk, and no rough edges hence not much to place a foot on. But kids got fixated on this tree today. I stood watching and encouraging and the kids kept trying and slipping down the tree. My son asked me to push him up. I insisted to figure out a way himself. I could observe my daughter struggling. I strained to lend her a hand. They tried leaning against the other thick branch of the tree and climb. They failed. They tried finding a latching place to secure one foot and climb. They failed. An older child came over, fascinated with their game. He tried warning them about a possible fall and resultant hurt. They paused to listen to the boy but kept at it. The boy kept with his predictions. Soon the foreboding got to their head and they limited their endeavor. They started thinking this is the highest they can climb that tree. I prompted them of their intentions and not to think about the fall. They started anew. They got minor scrapes but pressed on with it. They pushed each other in an attempt to make it. I reminded them how they can actually work shoulder to shoulder to achieve what they both want. The boy stopped his cautions and started cheering them. They finally managed to give it their best shot. My son hung from the tree and declared, I am a sloth now. Life lessons: Throw that notion out of the window: Don’t jump into uncharted waters, because then you may never discover something, anything. Too often we equate doing a difficult thing to climbing a mountain. Rather it is going down and then up a valley. It’s actually when we are in the midst of it all that our enthusiasm may ebb away. Don’t let people's beliefs limit your potential. It’s often in the stories that we tell ourselves that decide our fate. Our choice: raise our standards or lower them. We have our own paths to pursue but we do not have to work in isolation. Climbing trees make for really dirty sweaters and I should have taken off their jumpers before!!!