Lessons from a baby

I HAVE A nine-month daughter and being my first baby, I have been keen on closely watching every step of growth she takes because I want to enjoy the whole parenting experience.

Saturday, March 09, 2013

I HAVE A nine-month daughter and being my first baby, I have been keen on closely watching every step of growth she takes because I want to enjoy the whole parenting experience. This way, I have managed to learn some lessons about life that I couldn’t have learnt in any other way. One of those key lessons is that we should never get tired of trying new things. And this is what I am going to concentrate on in this article.In the last two months, this baby has been sitting properly and has learnt to dance with her head, arms and legs, whenever she wants to express her happiness to anyone around her. Unfortunately, because she’s not yet strong enough, some of the times she tries dancing she falls down and gets hurt. She then starts crying but on looking at us smiling at her, she stops crying and resumes the dance.How I wish in life we could all be like this baby and always be quick to rise up from whatever fall find ourselves in and move on as if nothing happened! In life, we always keep trying new things, some of which succeed, while others are bound to backfire due to various reasons, sometimes which are above our control. Whenever things go wrong, there are those who immediately get up and resume their pursuit of success and those who choose to stay down, lamenting and wailing over what went wrong, even when they very well know they cannot reverse what has already happened.If you have been observant you have noticed that there are some people who are ever talking about bad news all the time, so much that they have become synonymous with bad news. In fact they have become sad news themselves. You don’t want to meet them in the morning because you can almost predict they are going to tell you about the husband who is not supportive, the neighbor who plays loud music, the government that hasn’t done what the people expected, high bills for water and electricity, high food prices, and so on. Such people somehow always have a litany of problems on their lips because they have chosen to fall into their problems and sit (or even sleep) in them.It is important that we learn to rise above our problems like a baby. When a baby tries to crawl and falls down, they don’t give up because they know that no matter what it takes they must learn to walk because as grown-ups they will need to walk in order to move faster. So for a baby, the pain of falling is nothing compared to the joy of beginning to walk. Never allow a fall to end your business, spiritual life, intellectual journey or any other important aspect of your life. Always keep rising and moving on. Like Dr. Martin Luther King Junior advised: "If you cannot fly run. If you cannot run walk. If you cannot walk crawl. By all means keep moving.”  Bake is the Managing Director of WORLD OF INSPIRATION & Founder of the AUTHORS’ FORUM in Uganda