Before We Learned the Rules

What a four-year-old on stage can teach us about living

Dear Reader,

My almost-four-year-old daughter, Kennedy, recently had a dance recital.

Kennedy is shy by nature. Reserved. She doesn’t like to get messy. Even as a baby, she never needed a burp cloth.

She is also, by nature, a rule-follower. (“Mom! Quinny is being naughty and has a snack on the sofa!”)

When she’s on stage, though, you’d never know it.

She becomes spirited. Vivacious and alive. The other children watch the teacher, trying to mimic the moves, and Kennedy is in her own world, completely owning the dance in her own way.

You’d never guess the girl on stage is the same quiet girl behind the curtain.

Michael looked at me and said, “We have to nurture this for Kennedy.”

And we do (the amount of times we play certain soundtracks for her to perform for us is a little unhinged). We’ve tried soccer, taekwondo, swim, all the things — but nothing transforms her the way music and dance seem to.

She is fully herself—shining her brightest, doing what she loves most.

We don’t care that she doesn’t follow the directions on stage. In a way, it’s a relief. It’s beautiful — that she owns her own world fully, even if others notice she’s out of place.

Which reminds me of something.

When we’re little, we simply are who we are. We haven’t yet learned all the ways we’re “supposed” to be.

Yet, the people who leave the deepest impression rarely seem to follow someone else’s choreography. They carve their own path.

I know this to be true: the best decisions of my life haven’t come from following the formula. They’ve come from paying attention to the quiet voice inside me, telling me there might be another way. A better way for me.

We are each born with our own nature. One worth honoring. The things that made us different at four often become our greatest gifts at forty.

When Kennedy dances, she isn’t trying to stand out. She isn’t trying to be unique. She’s simply lost in something she loves.

And maybe that’s the clue.

Maybe our gifts reveal themselves not in the places where we force ourselves to fit, but in the parts of ourselves we’ve quieted.

Of course, hearing your own voice isn’t always easy.

I’ve learned that if I want to hear myself, I have to create the conditions for it. It helps to go outside—feet in the grass, face in the sun. To spend time alone. There is wisdom that only seems to arrive when the noise leaves. To keep a journal, because putting thoughts on paper often reveals what was there all along.

I’ve also learned to be careful about how many opinions I invite into a decision. When too many voices enter the room, my own tends to disappear. So before I ask what everyone else thinks, I try to ask myself first.

Somewhere along the way, we become disconnected from our own nature. We look outward for answers. We study other people’s maps. We forget how to trust ourselves.

The work, I think, is finding our way back.

Back to the thing that has been there all along.

xx Megan