Uninhibited
After a lot of rain and being inside far too much, I decided to go to one of my happy places, Asilomar, for a walk this afternoon. I parked on the street and walked down the boardwalk and up the sandhill and then down towards the beach. There were so many people on the beach! This coronavirus has definitely got people going outside.
Anyhow, I saw a young mom with her son on a beach towel and then the little boy ran off with a bucket and mom leaned back with a book to read. The boy, who was no more than five years old, ran over to me yelling something. When he got closer I heard him say "I founded a shrimp."
He was very proud. We had a brief exchange about his shrimp and I asked him if he had eaten it. "No, silly," he told me. He rambled on about some other stuff without stopping in between thoughts or sentences to take a breath.
I needed to cross a little stream of water and the little boy saw me pacing back and forth and testing out rocks for their stability. He looked at me and said, "just do like this" as he hopped lightly from rock to rock and onto the other bank.
I laughed out loud. What a beautiful little mind he had. He was uninhibited by the fear of falling and I clearly was. He stood on the other side of the little stream, jumping up and down and yelling, "just go!"
After much trepidation, I crossed the stream, markedly less limberly than he had. He had already run off to join his sister who at this point was yelling towards me about her brother's shrimp discovery. I went on my walk with much to think about.
Am I afraid to "just go?" Maybe I should do like the little boy and just jump on ahead to the other side of the stream. Maybe I think too much. Why do we think so much? Test every rock before taking a step?
