I have written about little children and the Kingdom of Heaven in an earlier blog.
My daughter, son-in-law and all three of my grandkids visited us a few weeks ago. My grandson, Krish, is older now and wants to do things with me.
He loves playing dominos and I sent him a box with more than a thousand tiles, but that set was in his home in the Bay Area. So, we improvised with a deck of playing cards. Fold each one lengthwise and you end up with a pretty serviceable domino.
We started setting up the dominos on the large glass center table we have in our living room. We were only halfway done when a card he was placing fell and knocked down the entire chain.
His eyes filled with tears.
“No problem,” I said, “Let’s begin again.”
His eyes lit up and we began again. And the chain fell again. And again.
I told him that, after every ten cards or so, we should leave a gap of two cards and build beyond the gap. This was an insurance gap. If he knocked a card down, it would only affect a few cards and not the entire chain.
He is bright. He understood the concept right away.
But then a funny thing happened. Every time I left an insurance gap, he filled it up. One time, we were almost done when his little sister, Kyra, came and he proudly showed her what we had done. Before he could stop her she reached out with her little hand and knocked everything down.
We started rebuilding.
I was now getting a little annoyed. Every time I put in an insurance gap and he plugged it right away, I firmly removed the cards he put in and restored the gap. He started crying. I gave in and let him do it his own way.
We never got the entire chain built. I continued being annoyed.
Later that afternoon it hit me. I was obsessed with getting a complete chain constructed with all the playing card dominos in place. Then we knock it down and clap.
I was focusing on the outcome.
He, on the other hand, was having a good time playing with his tatha. In fact, he was enjoying seeing me get annoyed. It didn’t matter to him whether we got the domino chain built or not. And I was too thick to understand this.
And I understood what Matthew meant when he said that we needed to be like little children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Think of your life. What domino chain are you striving to get built? Are you trying to become the CEO? Or to become the dominant industry player? Or to own a bigger mansion than your hugely successful high-school classmate? Or be happily married like your best friend? Or be more peaceful and free of stress?
What chimera are you chasing?
Can you see, really see, that the chase itself is life? That is all that there is. That is all that has always been, but you never understood this.
Think about it.
Peace!
