M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

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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