Listening To Your Heart

When you're a child you imagine wispy wonderful whimsical widgets. Your heart speaks suddenly and soundly like a stoic soldier issuing commands. These ideas and commands comforts the idealistic nature of your soul, they're aligned with your inner wants and desires. I have the belief that in your childhood your destiny is revealed, that if you only paid it a bit of attention we would grow up knowing exactly what we need to accomplish, become and love.

Take for instance, my most favorite scene from It's A Wonderful Life. It's when George is a kid, old enough to be a soda jerk. He takes his place behind the counter to get Mary some ice cream. As he's scooping her ice cream, George explains that he'll be a famous explorer. But Mary has other plans, she leans over the counter while he's bent down and whispers:

Is this the ear you can't hear in? George Bailey, I'll love you until the day I die.

You can find Mary whispering the sweet sayings at 5:52. Mary clearly knows she loves George and never forgets it. I make it a habit of listening to my children when they express their inner desires and things they like. We keep a scrap book of all the thoughts, ideas and things they want to do...sort of a bucket list.

One of Annie's childhood dreams is to open an animal shelter with one of her friends, Mallory. They already have a really cute name picked out, Annnie-Mals. She also has a list of characteristics for her future mate, one is that he must be extremely fond of animals. We've been adding to this scrap book yearly, it will be my graduation present to her one day, and hopefully she'll always remember her childlike wants and wishes, and truly have a wonderful life.