It's hard to believe - but I've now been sending
out "Mindful Moment" for over one year! The very first
one was sent on May 20, 2003. You can read it - and
all of the others - right here.
I want to relate a particularly relevant story that
was told by author Shad Helmstetter the first chapter
of his book "Predictive Parenting" (I have edited the
story somewhat for length).
I will always remember the occasion
of my sixth birthday, when some of my friends and a
few relatives were at my home for my birthday party.
One of the guests was a distant uncle named Eli.
Sometime during the party Eli told me he wanted to
talk to me. So we went outside to sit under the trees
to talk. "Can you snap your fingers?" Eli asked. I
immediately told Eli, "Of course I can," and raised my
hand to snap my third finger against my thumb in a
clear, sharp "snap".
"That's good. I'd like you to do something for me,"
Eli said. "Next year, on your seventh birthday, go
outside for a few minutes, all by yourself, and snap
your fingers just once. Then, on your eighth birthday,
do the same thing again. And do it again on your ninth
birthday, and on your tenth." Sometime during the day
go off someplace by yourself and snap your fingers
once."
I agreed that I would do what he said.
"Then, after your tenth birthday," Eli
continued, "snap your fingers once on your fifteenth
birthday, and once on your twentieth, and your twenty-
fifth, and do it again, once every five years, for every
fifth birthday you have for the rest of your life."
By then I was more confused, but I still
listened. "Let me see you snap your fingers again," Eli
told me, so I snapped my fingers again.
"Since the first time I asked you to do that it has
only been a few minutes," Eli said. "But did you notice
that by now it seems like there is no time at all
between those two snaps? As you get older, you'll
start to learn that once time has gone by, it will be
nothing more than a snap of your fingers, and you'll
wonder where all that time has gone."
"Never forget that it's what you do between those
snaps of your fingers that counts," he told
me.
