Life lessons from a three year old

Shopping in Dischem the other day a particularly viby song comes on in-store and my three year old starts bopping his head to the music.

Midway through the song the urge to shake his booty suddenly becomes too much to bear and he turns to me: “Stop the trolley Mommy, I have to get out!”.

He proceeds to break into dance, taking up most of the aisle with his hip-gyrating moves. Not a care in the world for what anyone thought, and why should he? So I joined him. What a sight we must have made. My boy is teaching me a lot about how to do life.

Dancing in particular strikes a cord with me because I am happiest when I can abandon all restraint and just dance.

Yet I am not confident that I do not look utterly ridiculous when doing so.

It’s a recurring battle in my mind to just not care.

Life is too short and precious to be constrained by the opinions – and even imagined opinions – of others.

But the fear of what others think inhibits most people in some form or fashion. Children, however, do not care one whit. Hence the answer is to stop, listen and learn from children, they already know how. Adults so often get life upside down.

My boy asked me the other day if I was an adult.

I think I would rather be like a child. I am struck by the profound research done by Australian nurse Bronnie Ware, published in 2011 in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. She spent several years caring for people in the last 12 weeks of their lives and recorded their dying revelations.

She was impressed by the clarity of vision her patients gained in those last weeks and how the same themes surfaced repeatedly.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. Ware writes that many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. “As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.”
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

“This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.”

The regrets are sobering.

So no more pretending. More laughter, more silliness. If you are unsure, ask yourself “What would a pre-schooler do?”

George Ezra’s Hit single ‘Budapest’ is one I cannot resist dancing too. Check out these seniors reactions to the song. Its just priceless. 

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