Slow Down the Busyness of your Life

My younger daughter was complaining  to my wife. “Dad was watching TV, taking  very little rest and that too for very less time.” That rocked me out of my bed, you can call it “my bedrock moment.” I immediately mustered some courage and sat down with them at the round (dining) table. By then my younger daughter had spilled the beans. This incident happened two weeks back. My wife had asked me to take rest as I was having fever for past few days and had asked my younger daughter to take care of me while they were away for the next couple of hours. It so happened that my younger daughter took that “taking care” note literally. She called her friend and told her,”Can you come to my house for playing? My mom told to take care of my dad”. I was at home those two days and I was discovering some of the best moments of my life with my younger one.

That evening my wife and elder one had to step out to meet one of our family members who had come from our native place. It was evening time and my younger daughter wanted milk. She said, “Dad you may not know how to mix milk , sugar and bournvita, so I will do it.” While she was engaged in this act, the lid of Bournvita came off and the container fell down and it spilled all over the floor. Inside my head I could hear the screams of my mother and my wife. But as an obedient child I got the broom and cleared it away. After all she was taking care of me. I guess It came through from my current reading “Extreme ownership” where it mentions that “It’s all your fault.” In fact after I cleaned the floor that quickly she said, “It was not that bad”.

As I travel quite a bit, and I also have a lot of social and community engagements during the weekend, two days of rest was house arrest for me. It made me realize one thing, I enjoyed those moments with her. In fact it was tough for me to get through the questions which she asked. That day it was the North East states’ election and I knew atleast all the capitals of those states. In comes the question from my daughter, “Dad tell me the capital of Jharkand?” Mama Mia !!! I asked her why don’t you ask some simpler ones like Andhra Pradesh – Hyderabad which you had also visited a couple of years ago. Hearing the words “couple of years ago” she said, ” Those were olden days.” Yes, 2 years for a 6 year old is olden days! That was another reckoning.

I realised that in our busy life, I do not get a chance to embrace these kind of little nice moments with my daughter. I was trying to figure out why I was not able to do it. Do we need to really slow down to see these little tiny things. In the book “The Things you can only see when you slow down” author Haemin Sunim mentions, “when everything around me is moving so fast , I stop and ask: