Never Stop Becoming

I asked Ishu how his first day of summer camp was.

“Was it good, was it great, was it hard, was it fun?” I listed off some easy adjectives thinking he’d need some prompting to dive into his reflection.

“IT WAS….” he started to respond and then with EMPHASIS, he finished, “…AMAZING!!!!!”

The thing he loved most was that he got to do not one, but TWO art projects. I’m telling ya, this kid is super into art right now.

It’s so TRUE what they say that you really can’t (and shouldn’t) box your kids into being a certain type of person. Because, if you had talked to me three years ago about what I thought Ishu would be into, I never ever ever imagined he’d be capable of sitting down and doing art.

I remember having him in that “Preschool Prep” Bubbles class where they did a mixture of art & music. And there was no part of him that wanted to sit down in the chair and do the art project. I watched as all the other kids gravitated toward the table with their grown-ups, eager to dig into the paint and glitter and glue. And Ishu was just not that kid.

I remember saying to several people, “I just don’t think art’s gonna be his thing.”

And now I’m seeing how wrong I was.

He freakin’ loves an art project.

Now, hindsight being 20/20, I see that there’s no way you can KNOW a kid’s entire being at the age of 2. They need time to evolve. They need their brain to mature a little bit, along with their attention span. They need more exposure to the world.

But now that I’m thinking about it, it’s not just our little ones who evolve over time – who surprise us with their interests and their personalities.

We all continue to evolve.

What was once of interest to me 10 years ago no longer feels exciting or like something I want to spend my time doing.

And that’s OK.

We evolve.

Things change.

We try new things.

Sometimes we double back to old things and love them in new ways.

Watching Ishu embrace art with so much joy reminds me that growth doesn’t have an expiration date.

Whether you’re five or thirty-five, you’re allowed to change. You’re allowed to surprise yourself.

And maybe that’s the best part. We never stop becoming.