Archive for August, 2013

You did it Daddy!

Sunday, August 25th, 2013

I walked through the Nutley, NJ Farmer’s Market on this beautiful sunny summer day.  A family of four was selecting fresh fruits and vegetables as the bag they brought flew away.  The dad went after and caught the bag.  His little girl, squealed, “Daddy, you did it!”  He smiled and said, “Yes, I did.”

As simple and fleeting as it was, for that moment his little girl saw him as a hero, and he was smart enough to recognize and relish it. How many of these moments happen in a given day that we may not stop to enjoy?

It is best said by this exerpt from the essay Knowing What’s Nice by Kurt Vonnegut.

And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex…His principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy.  So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, and talked lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

Enjoy the next to last weekend of summer, a glass of lemonade, and your special moments!

Tina Nocera, Founder

Parental Wisdom® 

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Are you spending time on important things?

Sunday, August 18th, 2013

Waste your money and you’re only out of money, but waste your time and you’ve lost a part of your life.  ~ Michael LeBoeuf

This past week Buzzfeed reported British actor Benedict Cumberbatch had a suggestion for the photographers camped outside the BBC Sherlock set Saturday in Cardiff, Wales. As he exited his trailer, Cumberbatch hid his face behind a hooded jacket and glasses and held up a sign reading, “Go photograph Egypt and show the world something important.”

We might have different points of view on what is important, but we have the freedom to spend our time in our way, for example:

  • Devote an entire afternoon to fishing with no catch to show for it
  • Take a two hour walk with your dog in the woods
  • Decide to pass the time on a rainy Saturday afternoon playing an online game
  • Cozy up on the couch watching old movies
  • Push your giggling toddler on a swing till dusk

To some, these might seem like trivial and unimportant activities, but who’s to judge when the decision of how to spend our time is ours.  The assumption is that we are getting something out of it, whether it is relaxing or fun or bonding or engaging.  What these activities have in common was the conscious choice to do these things simply because we wanted to.

In our celebrity crazed culture, we are vicariously living life through others, and at the end of the day have nothing to show for it. The reality shows, magazines at the checkout stands, and ‘celebrity news’ have become a feeding frenzy.  But as Benedict Cumberbatch suggests, it is simply not important.  There are other important things going on in the world.  Time is the great equalizer and we all get exactly the same amount of time each day – 1,440 minutes per day, and 10,080 minutes per week.  How will you choose to spend it?

We can stop the celebrity focused insanity by stopping the demand.  Pure economics will cause the reduced demand to become a limited supply.  And you can get back to more important things…like fishing.

What do you think?

Tina Nocera, Founder

Parental Wisdom®

 

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