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The
Nature of Awareness
The Law of the Frog
By
Richard and Linda Eyre
A dirt bike
trail goes up into the hills behind a cabin in Idaho where we try
to spend part of our summers. About the only thing the road leads
to is a little moss-covered pond that has always been a hit with
our children because it's just full of frogs. Our kids love to try
to catch them, and they're endlessly amazed by how well the frogs
swim and how far they can jump. A couple of our small boys became
remarkably adept at imitating their musical Rrrrribbit, rrrrribbit.
 Frogs
are amazing creatures. They've been around for 200 million years.
They were here with the dinosaurs! They can be found on all seven
continents. They live in deserts and in the tropics, at sea level
and atop tall mountains. They're extremely adaptable animals. Much
of their survival ability has to do with their remarkably long and
strong rear legs, which enable them to jump more than 25 times their
body length. But those same long, strong legs are considered a culinary
delicacy by many humans. And what we want to talk about here, with
apologies to the squeamish, is not how long frogs have existed or
how high they can jump, but how they can be cooked!
A frog-leg-fancying
friend once told us about the most flavor-enhancing method for cooking
frog legs. The key to freshness and flavor, he explained, is to
toss the frogs alive into the pot, similar to how lobsters are cooked.
(And he insisted this is no less humane than any other way of turning
them into food.) But with frogs it only works if you know exactly
how to do it. If you put a live frog in boiling water, his lightening
quick reflexes along with his jumping ability will catapult him
immediately out of the pot. But if you put frogs into a pan of cool
or lukewarm water they feel comfortable there, they relax and sit
back in their natural watery environment and don't make much effort
to escape.
Then you turn up the
heat so gradually that the frogs don't notice what's happening until
it's too late. They get so comfortable they fall asleep, and before
they wake up, they're cooked.
Let's think about that
process; about what actually happens in the phenomenon of cooking
frogs. The frog is released into water, his natural environment,
so he feels comfortable. It's his comfort zone. The water feels
so familiar that he loses his sense of alarm or awareness of danger.
His tendency is to think that water is water, that all water is
the same, that water is safe.
Since he's cold-blooded,
he's not very sensitive to the temperature of the water, so he doesn't
really notice that the heat is gradually going up. In fact, as the
water gets warmer, he feels even more comfortable and drowsy, until
he's essentially immobilized, completely unaware of the danger.
He falls asleep. Thus, before he feels the heat, it's too late;
he's unconscious and unaware, and so he cooks.
Please excuse that slightly
gruesome account, because it does make a powerful point. When we
become too comfortable, too set in our routine, too busy with our
work, we essentially fall asleep and lose our sensitivity and awareness,
thus failing to notice either the signals of danger in our children
or their unique potentials and the opportunities for positive action.
On average, how much
time do you think goes by between the time a child first experiments
with drugs and the time a parent becomes aware of the child's drug
use? Over two years! How many parents become aware of a problem
- any kind of problem - only when it's too late to effectively do
something about it? And it's not just negatives or problems; how
about opportunities? How many parents notice a child's true gift
or talent too late to effectively encourage or help him develop
it?
We can't help our children
if we don't know what's happening to them. We can't help them avoid
or overcome a problem if we don't see it coming or notice its warning
signs. We can't help them develop a talent if we haven't noticed
their gift or potential aptitude for it. We get in the
busy routine or comfort zone of our own world and we don't probe
or ask or notice enough to know what's really going on in our children's
world - or in their minds or in their hearts.
The Law of the Frog
is awareness! Awareness can be the greatest asset of parents. It
can make us conscious of all the other laws, and capable of implementing
and benefiting from them. And lack of awareness is what allows problems
to get too big to handle and allows all kinds of
opportunities to slip by unnoticed. When we're too much in our own
rut or our own world, we don't notice much or feel much about our
children's world. The signs may be all around us, the heat may be
going up, but we just don't see it or feel it. We get a little sleepy
and imagine that
everything is fine.
The frog's good, natural
instinct is to jump, and our good, natural instinct is to nurture
and help our kids. Our instinct and our intentions are usually right.
We get little nudges or feelings that something's not right with
a child; or promptings that we should ask about some worry or pursue
some potential or talent a child has. But we're so busy splashing
around in our own comfort zone, and we're a little sleepy.
Unlike the frog, we
must try harder to notice and feel and be aware of what's going
on around us, and in our kids' lives and inside their heads. Unlike
the frog, we must get out of our comfort zones and our assumption
that all is well and nothing is changing with our children. Unlike
the frog, we need to stay awake and alert and notice and pay early
attention to both danger signs and manifestations of interests,
talents, and opportunities.
Unlike the frog, we
have to understand that all water, all situations, all kids, are
not the same, that each is different and that we have to understand
those differences.
Unlike the frog, we
have to be warm-blooded; deeply interested and caring and sensitive
to our children and their worries and concerns. Unlike the frog,
we have to ask questions, lots of them; about where we are with
our kids, where they are with their lives, what they're thinking,
what they need.
Note: This and other "animal lessons" is adopted from
the Eyre's new book The Book of Nurturing
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© 2003 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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