Childhood Convictions

Did you have any strongly held convictions when you were a child? Something like what life should look like, or “what you were going to do when you grew up”?

If I did, I cannot succinctly say what they were, except for the fact that I always turned to nature. If I was looking for something to do, I wanted to be out in nature. If I encountered a problem, I wanted to get out in nature. If I was totally happy, how best to celebrate it than doing so in nature?

It still took me years to realize how important nature truly is to me. Yet now, when life’s twists and turns show up unexpectedly, I find that I start listening to nature…

And the question that seems to come up time after time is: What is this situation that I am finding myself in telling me about my nature? 

When a woodpecker across the road is widening the opening of a nesting block for much smaller birds, I ask myself if there are any ‘doorways’ in my life that are too small to get through? Opportunities that I am not examining for whatever the reason. Only to find that not checking what is hiding behind that doorway that is only just ajar, makes me miss out. Missing out by choice, I might add…

In this way, the convictions we held as a child can be hints as to what is important in our lives.

Now, if you - as a child - were convinced you were going to be a fireman and as life progressed you didn’t become that fireman, it  doesn’t mean that you should change careers all of a sudden. However, asking yourself why you wanted to become a fireman may give you information on things that are truly important to you. Was it the “putting out fires”? In that case perhaps you now find yourself helping others solve problems of a different kind. Or was it “being the hero”? In which case you may find yourself being a hero in your chosen field of work…

In other words, our childhood convictions can become the pathway to our core believes. Or even the core knowing of what we are here for. Of what our place is in the grand skein of things. Of how we can make a difference in the world…

That childhood conviction was not just something silly, or just something that everybody says at that age - it was something that we would remember throughout our lives, and that could give us hints which direction to go when life would be chaotic. When we might come to a point of feeling powerless.

So in a chaotic time like we are living in today, we may want to ask ourselves, what was my childhood conviction, and what does it have to tell me at this point in time?