all the meaning in our moment

Sometimes it's all about finding meaning in the simplest, seemingly meaningless moments.

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Last night I was at my friend Emily's father's house for Sunday dinner. The food was wonderful, her family was wonderful (as always), and I got to spend some quality time with her little 13 month old nephew, Jackson (which is sometimes the most wonderful, who doesn't love a precious little kid?).

He often wanders off to do his own thing, to see what all is going on with everyone. He's independent and definitely marches to his own beat, seems like he's in his own little world half the time. He walks quite well, almost stumbles sometimes (who doesn't?), but is a resilient little one. His great grandmother had made some comment to someone else and he was standing so close by her that when he went to look up to follow the voice, he craned his neck back too far to look up at her face and fell backward.

His little, not completely stable, frame toppled over because he was looking up so high. He shrugged it off and kept on his little adventure around the house jingling the red Christmas bell.

I took a lesson from watching him stumble while trying to look up, and that's what it's all about. We are constantly looking down or at eye level -- seeing everything as it is and not moving toward what it could be. It's easy to do. To not face things, to hide your face from the potential positives and when we keep looking down or simply looking straight on into what we have, what we are and where we are, life is at a standstill.

Looking up, it takes guts and it takes pushing ourselves to search for the things we're after-- just like he was searching for where that voice came from. And sometimes, like little Jackson did, we'll stumble and topple over. And maybe we'll feel embarrassed and maybe we'll cry over it and maybe it'll even be seemingly impossible to bounce back from-- but it is possible, it is always possible. It's a choice we have to consciously make. What's the point in anything if we're at such a standstill that we can't even look up because we're too scared to move from where we are?

If Jackson, at 13 months old, can literally look up without the fear of toppling over, then who's to say that any of us should be afraid? That little boy's innate courage (subconscious at best) was such a lesson to me of reaching.

Add another notch to my faith in moving forward in life -- in all aspects -- with unfailing confidence.