A field trip

I went to a cabane a sucre with my daughter's daycare class yesterday. We got to ride a school bus, go on a tour of the sugar bush in a horse-pulled wagon, listen to a funny man do a very unpolitically correct version of why we have maple syrup, eat a greasy lunch, dance to some live music, then eat sugar on snow. It was a cool day, but sunny, so all in all I think we lucked out. There were many other school groups there, so there was a modest amount of waiting. After lunch we were lined up outside waiting for our tire d'erable and Naomi was getting restless. She pulled at my arm and whined at the unfairness of not getting her treat right away. We all get where she's coming from. I tried to explain that we all have to wait our turn sometimes, but that logic wasn't making a lot of sense to her at that moment. So I asked her, "Is this something worth waiting for?". She stopped pulling and looked at me, and I asked again, "Nomi, is the taffy something you really want? Is it something worth waiting for?". She looked at me and nodded, "So we wait" I said, and she was suddenly compliant. I think that it's a good exercise to stop and reexamine why we want something. There are a lot of things in the world that we desire, and I have discovered that a lot of that stuff for me is essentially useless. It's taken me a while to realise that the desire for the thing is stronger than my actual need for it in most cases, and when I stop and ask, "is it worth waiting for", most of the time it just isn't. But sometimes the answer is yes, and the wait leads to a sweet reward. I'm really glad that we waited too :-)