A small victory today - we got to eat sushi together as a family.
I know, I know - I did say small.
But for us with a daughter who will be turning six this year, we can pretty much count on one hand the times we have been able to sit down and eat the same thing together out of the house. Even at home, it is rare. And, while Smallsteps isn't keen on everything, she is happy with the basics with some salmon nigiri and avocado and cucumber maki. She was pretty excited too.
It doesn't take much to be considered a win these days it seems. I am not sure why, as overall, things aren't going too badly, but it all seems relative to world events and around here, friends are pretty concerned. Finland has "a little bit" of history with Russia, and nothing has been forgotten, even though the last conflict it dates back to over 75 years. Essentially, it is drilled into them through culture, and the Russian government isn't doing itself any favors to change the opinions. Though they don't care at all about how the world seem them - in the same way they don't care about their own people either.
I always find it interesting that some people look up to people like Putin, to leaders in general really. It could be my own dislike for authority that skews my opinion, but it is commonly said that a good leader leads by example, which means that the people who look up to these types, given the chance, would act similarly. I think that is pretty telling really - it is a kind of "birds of a feather" situation, except the followers don't have the ability to directly, so gather and support someone who does.
Lead by example
As a parent, this is something that I have thought a bit about and tried to demonstrate to my daughter the best of me, rather than the worst. I fail a lot at this of course, as for instance, I can be short of temper and patience at certain times, but that is part of the "example" also, isn't it? I think some parents try to show their best, but hide their worst, making it appear that they "aren't that bad", rather than saying that all humans live on many spectrums and rarely do we actually "get it right" in this life and often, we can get it very long.
The example for my daughter in all of this is the discussions we have, where especially when things don't go as well as they could have, we talk about why, and how we could perhaps approach it different in the future. She tends to listen, but changing the behavior is more than "knowing", it is understanding.
Knowing isn't doing. If you know but don't do, you don't actually know enough to understand, as if you did, you would change to do better.
I feel that these days when we have an answer for just about every question we could ever ask, right at our fingertips twenty four hours a day and within seconds, people know a lot. But, there seems to be a disconnect in the ability to apply what is known to make a practical difference. There is plenty of discussion, which comes in the form of polarized argument, but not much practical application takes place. There is a lot of "I would..." statements being made, not "I am."
It has taken years of systematic application to get to this point today, and after all of it, all we get to do is sit down together as a family and eat some sushi. Obviously, the ramifications for our daughter are much larger than just a single meal, but it is interesting to think that in my head, this is the milestone marker for the "win", the culmination of years of effort and a lot of heartache, because my wife and I spoke about having sushi together as a family when she was just a baby, but we couldn't even let her nibble on a few grains of rice.
From terms of me leading by example, I wonder if the best examples of me, are going to be lost to her, as they might be in the formative years that she will never really be aware of. Or perhaps, it is because they are in those years that she will benefit from them, even though she is not aware that they took place. How I see it is, whether she knows it or not, the effort hasn't been wasted, if her life is better for me having done what I have. I don't know what I will do going forward, but I do know what I have done thus far.
I would do it all again for her.
Taraz
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