Saturday, May 25, 2013

A Birthday Gift

Fiona is a neighborhood teenager who babysits Miss C.

Fiona will be turning 16 and her mother is giving her an incredible gift.  It's such a neat idea that I wanted to share it. 

She is asking those that know her daughter to write her a note or letter answering these three questions:

What do you wish you knew when you were 16?
What strengths and positive attributes do you know about Fiona?
What unique gifts and abilities do you see that Fiona possesses?

What do you wish you knew?

I wish I knew that many of the things about my self I judged as odd or idiosyncratic are some of my most colorful qualities.  That I could celebrate these instead of trying to sand the edges of them and make them fit a tiny black and white puzzle that I'd created in my mind. 

I wish I knew that asking questions is okay, and making changes based on the answers to those questions is okay. 

I wish I knew that making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn, but also that yesterday's lesson never applies to what I need to learn today.  It belonged to yesterday and today has something entirely new for me to learn.  

I wish I knew that relationships are meant to heal us and teach us about ourselves, and heal us and teach us some more, repeat, forever. 

I wish I knew that there is no there.

I wish I knew that doing something that inspires my heart is one of the fastest and funnest (yes I know that's not a word )ways to learn more about myself and the world.  And will always lead me to the next funnest (now I've used it twice) or interesting thing that I need to know.

I wish I knew that God was bigger than the religion I thought s/he belonged to.

I wish I knew that reading other people's lessons was not half as valuable as learning my own specific lessons.  

Finally, I'm glad I didn't know all these things then because it gave me something to learn from age 16 to Current Sage. 

Now back to Fiona and the other two questions.