Wisdom

 This. Year. Flew. By.

Who else feels that way about 2021? A lot of it was a blur, really. Maybe it's a pandemic thing. Maybe it's a mother thing. Maybe it's an adulting thing. Time just seems to fly faster and faster. 

This year, I felt wiser. I actually started to feel like I was an adult making adult decisions and being wise. That's not to say I wasn't wise before this year, but this year, I started to feel it. 

About four to six months ago, we took my children to a more secluded playground with less people. When we arrived, nobody was there. Shortly after, another family came and their kids started playing on the playground as well. Their guardian went off to the side and sat on the grass while the kids played. 

The two kids were older than my children and playing by themselves. At one point while watching my kids play, I sat on the play structure and was sitting in front of one of the pathways. I heard one of the other kids come up the structure, and I correctly assumed he would want to cross through where I was sitting. No sooner than I had processed this thought in my head, I heard him say, "Move."

I calmly turned around to face him after his rude request and said, "Can you ask me in a nicer way?" 

He replied, "How do I do that?" Now this, I wasn't expecting. This boy looked to be at least 10 years old, so for him to ask me how to do that was slightly baffling. Had he really not learned how to politely ask a request? 

I told him, "You can say, 'Excuse me, can you please move?'" He asked me again by repeating what I had just told him, and I scooted over so he could walk across.

10 years ago, had a kid told me to move, I would have just moved to get it over with. Five years ago, had a kid told me to move, I would have probably still just moved to get it over with. Something changed after I had my own children. There's a phase in Chinese I think of to describe it. Translated, it would mean bold or audacious. These were not words I would have described myself with growing up. But somehow being wiser has brought it out in me.

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This year, I started reading again. I know, I say again because I read a lot in college because I had to for my major. Guilty secret: I don't actually enjoy reading that much. I have to be in a mood for it and I have to mentally prepare myself to read. Also, I think most days I'm really too tired to read because if I read, I get sleepy. 

Despite all that, these are the books I read this year, and all within the last six months or so. 

Three are YA fiction, three are just fiction, and one isn't pictured. I tried really hard to read Great Expectations again but the book isn't at my house and it was really hard for me to get through it, and reading on an iPad at that. I made it about a third of the way through and lost my momentum. Sorry Charles Dickens, I'll try again later. It's not my fault he got paid by the word...

I read Enchantment in high school and Voyage in the Dark in college. Both of these books I enjoyed the first time but simply didn't feel like I fully understood the depth of it. I was also 16 and 20, respectively, probably too young to actually get either book at the time. Now, reading them in my 30s (😱 seeing that typed out) they were so much more interesting and captivating. If you haven't read Enchantment and you like historical fiction/fantasy, you should definitely try it. 

As I look at these books, I actually see a theme of wisdom (or lacking wisdom) throughout all of them. I don't think that was intentional, or maybe subconsciously, it was. 

Next year, I'm hoping to read a little more. I haven't read every book on my bookshelf, and there are a lot I would like to reread again. Maybe this is my unofficial resolution. 

Here's to 2022.