When my oldest son was around three or four, we were sitting at the table one afternoon having a snack of some fruit. A tiny fruit fly hovered near the cut pieces of cantaloupe and my child became focused on the fly, both vexed and transfixed. A long moment hung there as he stared in consternation at the miniscule interloper. Offhandedly, I said, “It’s just a fruit fly.”
My kid kept looking at the fly, much the way he often looked at his little brother. After careful consideration, and while still keeping an eye on the fly, he warily asked, “Next time, can he bring his own fruit?”
So, whether it’s learning to share our fruit, our toys, our parents’ attention or our resources as a society it’s natural to wonder if there will be enough for us. Yet as parents, it serves to both acknowledge and be compassionate for our children’s emotional experiences—be it the literalism of pre-school age or the turbo-charged importance of every little thing during the high drama that is middle school, but it also serves our kids for us parents to find our way toward an abundance model (at least when it comes to love). If we act from a place of trust that we are blessed (and aside from worries about the future, and lingering resentments about the past), we will generally discover that today we happen to have enough.
While we may smile at the absurdity of a fly bringing his own fruit to the table, how can we be sure that the spirits don’t smile at us and our own lack of unity consciousness—our own tendency to grab at everything we can and expect everyone else to fend for themselves—as opposed to waking up and trusting that we’re all in this world together.
So whatever fruit might stand for in our multi-determined world (knowledge, sin, life, sweetness, growth, etc.) perhaps today we might dedicate the fruits of our labor not just to our own children, but to all our collective children. The mere intention, in and of itself, I truly believe joins us together in subtle yet powerful ways, and makes our world a better place.
Namaste, Bruce
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