radvent day 3 – fascination

Posted on 03. Dec, 2011 by Princess Lasertron in alice, radvent

The most fascinating people I know never sacrifice who they are for what other people want them to be–whether it’s pressure to look like other people, to fit into a “personal brand,” or to work the same way as other people. One of my favorite mantras, “The world is not me,” is my way of giving myself permission to be my own fascinating self, separate from the expectations and assumptions of every other person.

Are you fascinating?

Write a list of interview questions you would love to be asked. Use BOLD. Or your favorite fat marker. (Don’t have a jar of fat, bright markers? Add that to your Christmas list.) Wait a few hours–go back to real life for a bit, answer some e-mail, pick up your kitchen, make some tea, run to the store. Whatever you need to do. After a bit of distraction, come back to your list and ask yourself each question out loud. Record your answers or write them down.

Listen to the interesting person you are. See yourself as someone you would love to get to know better. And give others the chance to have the privilege of knowing you! You are fascinating!

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The Ocean and the Wind

Dear Alice,

I’ve been a little nervous and anxious–not very, but a little–about how few words you know right now. You are very chatty, you emulate our sounds and inflection, and you can make any animal sound from a duck to a guinea pig to a mouse to a goat–ANY sound. But you aren’t saying any words yet. You don’t call me mama. When you need things, you whine for them, and I can tell in your frustration how badly you want to communicate with me. I can tell that you just want me to understand. But today I saw you have a breakthrough.

Your dad and I set the timer for 30 minutes to an hour every day to clean. You’re very helpful and tidy–you love wiping surfaces, and you like to put your animals on your bed and your books on your shelf. You laugh and run as we rush around you trying to get as much done as we can before the timer runs out. Your eyes sparkle when you take a rare pause and inspect an book before you put it away, turning it over in your hand and feeling the pages. Your face lights up when you see your dad and I look down on you and smile as we drop a warm new basket of laundry on the floor in front of you. I can see the little gears inside your head turning and working as you hold up a washcloth, smooth it on the floor, and try to match the corners together just like you’ve seen us do.

I pulled your clean sheets out of the basket and stretched them over your little mattress. You sat on your bed and closed your eyes in the breeze as I lifted and fluttered a blanket over your head. I finished making your bed as you arranged each of your animals around your pillows. Your hand paused on an animal you don’t often play with–a sheep that makes relaxing sounds that help you go to sleep. (It never did help you go to sleep, so Sleep Sheep is not a buddy that you have a lot of familiarity with.) I showed you how to push a button on the sheep to make an ocean sound–waves crashing against a shore in a rhythmic “wooosh, woooosh.” Your eyes glazed over and you leaned back against your pillow with your favorite bunny Flocki under your arm, stroking her ear with your thumb.

“The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.”

-Mark Twain

Suddenly you sat up and made a little noise and ran out of the room. You came back with my phone, turned it on, and scrolled to your flash card app. You flipped through three pages of flash cards, searching each page, and finally pulled up the “wind” card. You tapped it and it made the same sound–”woooooosh, woooooosh.” You played the card again on my phone and pointed to the Sleep Sheep, looking at me wide-eyed.

Seeing you make that kind of logical connection in your mind isn’t new to me–you are so bright and smart, and you have been noticing the relationships between objects since you were very, very young. The big breakthrough tonight was that you wanted to tell me about it. That you showed me with your gestures and little sounds exactly what was on your mind, and you communicated your own thought to me. You are creating your self now, not just reacting to others. My eyes welled up with tears and I called your dad in and you did the same thing for him, making the “wind” sound and pointing to the sheep as it played the lulling sound of ocean waves.

Your unbridled fascination with everything in the world reminds me that I come from the same world. We are surrounded by cultures and places and symbols that lay before us to be explored and experienced. You remind me of what it’s like to see something for the first time, and watching you slowly find the language to connect your experiences with mine draws me deeper into your fascinating world.

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Are you writing your own radvent responses in your journal or blog? Feel free to share the link–they are awesome sources of inspiration for everyone!

xo
meg

Tags: letters, radvent 2011