Walking Toward Their Future

Posted by Russ Devan (New Hanover, United States) on 12 June 2008 in Lifestyle & Culture and Portfolio.

This was taken at my oldest son's high school commencement exercises on Wednesday evening as the graduating class walked past the bleachers of the high school stadium in front of all the cheering parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles. Nick is our first child to graduate high school.

It's amazing how fast 18 years can go by when your child is your calendar. When I think about it, his childhood years were here and gone in an instant. Just a flash before my eyes, really. Years of fishing, hiking, camping, learning to ride his bike, argueing about bedtimes, baseball, picking on his sisters, friends staying overnight, swimming, climbing into our bed during thunderstorms and bad dreams, bedtime stories, boy scouts, guitar lessons, skateboarding, seeing his first bear while camping, catching his first fish, endless computer games, learning to drive, and loud music (can you believe that we both have the same favorite band when I was his age? Led Zeppelin!).

Like any dad, I vividly remember the day he was born. Rushing out the door to the hospital at 5 am, I literally spilled my entire cup of coffee all over the front door of our house as I tried to carry it, our "go bag", and other essentials to the car to drive my wife and our new baby-to-be to the hospital (I just left the coffee and the cup on the front porch to clean up sometime later). When he was born later that day, he laid there very quietly in my arms just looking up at me with his big dark eyes. I remember telling him "welcome to the world, little guy" and remarked how cute he was. I then looked up at my wife while holding him and said "ok, now what?". Now that munchkin, who's first word was "ball" as he pointed to the full moon in the sky one night, is taller than me and heading off to college in the fall. Where did the time go?

"The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both."
- Zen Buddhist Text

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