It's Under the Details

To all my mom readers out there...  do you ever find that you learn more from your children than you could ever dream of teaching them?

Right now, when the hormones aren't raging them into a moody frenzy, my daughters are really fun.  They're still children, but they're on the cusp of being something more. The best thing about this is an ability to grasp more complex concepts and a desire to talk them out... but mixed with a simplicity that I admire.  Because it's right.

We passed a political billboard the other day that was pointing out all the flaws of a particular politician, paid for by his opponent.  They were a little perplexed as to why there would be an advertisement of that nature, so we talked a bit about negative campaigning and how it works.

There was a pause of thought and then a pondering... "But... how are the people who vote supposed to know that they're any better?  Wouldn't it make more sense to say what they ARE going to do, and not just what's bad about the other person?"  Indeed, my little prodigies, indeed.

Sometimes, I think that, as adults, we make things so much more complicated than they need to be.  Every situation has so many details, so many what-ifs, so many conditions...  they cloud our ability to see the simplicity of truth that lies underneath all the details.

I had a falling-out with a friend not long ago... and as I sat contemplating all the details, all the contingencies, all the possibilities and wondered if it was worth it to pick up all the pieces, and sit with a bottle of superglue to put it all back together again... my daughter asked me, "Mom, did they ever say they were sorry?"

When the answer was no, she looked at me with a bit of sadness and said "Then, I don't think I want to talk to them anymore. And I don't think you should, either."

Perhaps, under all the details, it really is that simple.

There's a part of me that likes the details, that likes to sit and sort through them, to have arguments about them in my head with myself.  But, as I spend time talking life over with my budding young women, I am coming to realize more and more that the truth is rarely complicated, that right and wrong are quite simple.  The choices aren't difficult... It's the details we convince ourselves are important that make it seem so.  But when you clear the details away, and yes perhaps look at it as a child would, the choices are far clearer than you ever thought.