The Prevention Plan

The Key To Happiness:  Copy A 2-Year-old

By Kathy in Marketing Communications

I have realized over the last couple of months that most 2-year-olds instinctively approach life just as the great spiritual teachers counsel.

I’ve learned this by gazing in wonderment for hours at Wyatt, my 2-year -old grandson. On a moment-by-moment basis, he is paying attention, absorbing, playing, learning and doing. My husband and I kept him this past weekend and I learned more from him than he learned from me.

For instance, on Saturday we went my parents’ house to do some small repairs as we prepare to put it up for sale. All the furniture is gone – like my parents -- and I’m trying to push away the melancholy as I think about never again being in the home I have known for more than 40 years. I can’t help but notice that Wyatt is running round and round the den, yelling as loud as he can. He’s delighted with the sound effects that amplifies his voice throughout the room.  Active joy.

Thirty minutes later I stand in the front yard, making chit chat with some neighbors. As we talk, Wyatt squats and someone notices he is watching a colorful beetle roll a gigantic (for the beetle anyway) mound of dog poop across the street.  It is incredible to observe and a more interesting conversation ensues about what the beetle intends to do with this haul if and when he makes it all the way across the street. (I watched and he did.)

Still later, because I won’t take his big box of wooden blocks from the car into the house when he wants me to, Wyatt decides to do it himself and manages the distance and the steps without faltering.

On Sunday morning, he wakes me up and I ask him if he is ready to get up and see the world. “Yes,” he says excitedly, “let’s go see the world. “ We go on the back porch and sit quietly. I watch as he immediately notices the hummingbird at the flower, the squirrel’s nest in the tree, and the birds singing their breakfast songs.  He is obliviously to the heat.

Last night as I shopped at Lowe’s for paint, Wyatt kept looking way up at the ceiling, noticing the birds flying overhead and the thunder cracking outside the building. “What’s that?” he asked (for about the 27th time that weekend). Everything is of interest and is, well, interesting.

There are many spiritual leaders who teach that one of the easiest paths to living a better life and finding more happiness is to live more fully and intensely in the moment at hand. Two-year-olds don’t yet know about bills, taxes and death, but they do have this “living in the moment” thing down pretty well and can be excellent teachers. If we pay attention.