Sunday, December 12, 2010

A Beautiful Masterpiece


My eleven year old daughter has an interesting school assignment. The kids are supposed to come up with a metaphor about themselves. One girl wrote "I am the bow on top of the Christmas package." One boy in the class wrote "I am a monkey." Obviously a lot of work went in to that one! So I asked my daughter about hers, expecting to hear something about being a "Gleek" or something equally superficial. But to my surprise, my daughter wrote "I am the artist of the masterpiece", then proceeded to tell me that the "masterpiece" was her life. I sat there stunned for a second, thinking about all the possibilities in this statement and then I finally said "That is brilliant!".

Of course this prompted a dramatic speech from me about how we're all really the artists, but not all our lives turn out to be masterpieces. Some of our lives turn out to be items for sale at the Hotel/Motel Art Fair, or worse yet, crumbled up messes that end up in the garbage can.

After that discussion, I went to sleep thinking about how incredibly important every decision is for an eleven year old girl. The decision to focus on school or not, the decision to stay away from drugs and alcohol or not (especially with the addictive genes in my daughter's DNA), the decision to have sex too young or abstain, and the choices we make in friends. Every decision will shape the course of her life from this point forward.

So far my daughter has made excellent choices. I will try very hard to influence her to continue to make them, but ultimately the choices will be up to her. If she stays on the right track and keeps her heart and her head in the right places, that masterpiece will come together in a beautiful, beautiful way, and I can not wait to see it!

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