Wild Animals and the Truth

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I was visiting a friend and her daughter was going to go on a camp out the next day. Her teacher told them that there were wild animals around as a way to get them excited, this freaked her out and she couldn't sleep. I told her that I could help her if she wanted it, she said yes.

"The truth is that at this moment, you are safe. You are home with your family and that at this moment everything was OK. This is really all there is, now, and you are safe and sound. You can even go back to bed and now think about other things that you'd like to think about, or try what I do right before bed is to not think about anything. Tomorrow you will be around many adults and our job is to keep you safe and keep the wild animals away so even tomorrow you'll be safe."

This seemed to work for she went to bed and that was the last peep we heard from her.

www.theartofbeingadad.com
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Foolish King Dad

•Somethings just go the way they go. We dad's try to come off all knowing, wise, perfect, and sometimes we are just fools, still kings, but we rule from a different place. It's a place of being able to be silly, able to act in ways that our kids roll their eyes and wish were some other place, not necessarily have another dad, just wish he wasn't there then, embarrassing them.

In the short term it's foolish, and in the long term it's wise. The wise comes from the ability to still be young in one's soul, and to become old, to become an elder, to be able to still be in touch with your inner kid is way powerful. You'll notice that your kids will freak while the other kids look at you in a silent by amazed way, like that's so cool, I wish my dad was like that. You help wake them up, keep them on their toes, you can see it in their eyes, they are interested, curious... what's this dad doing being so alive?

I once heard Michael Meade say that we need our elders to be fully alive, dangerous, crazy, full of spirit. Without this, our youth looks at the old folks and say, "that is that last thing I ever want to be like - so why live long, what's the use?" But when a youth looks at someone alive as an elder, they say, "oh I get it, I want to be like that when I grow up!"

www.theartofbeingadad.com
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