To be Child-like

In case you haven’t noticed, from my posts and my casual signing-and-dancing-while-doing-normal-things, I absolutely adore the Christmas season. It’s that particular time of the year that my eyes turn glassy and I’m filled with all sorts of warm happy fuzzies in my tummy just because. You can blame the lights, the décor, the coca-cola, the songs, the niceness of strangers, the fireworks, the gifts, the food, the abundance of love and care, and the list goes on and on.

So before I start getting lost in my deep infatuation for the season, I wanted to share one of those serendipitous moments when you hear the right words at the right time – and coincidentally its about Christmas!

I randomly attended mass last Tuesday and the priest’s homily was everything I needed to hear. Let me try to share my understanding of it:

Christmas is all about waiting. We wait for the Savior. We wait for the birth of Jesus Christ, advent.

Life’s dominant theme is waiting.

When you hear that, it kind of depresses you. Does that mean we spend our whole lives in anticipation for the next great thing? Do we put everything else on hold because we are waiting for something we aren’t even truly sure is coming? What if we wait too long and it never comes? Or what if we get tired of waiting?

But before my mind got crazy with so many questions, the priest says 

“And thus we are reminded that we don’t just wait idly.” Whut?!  So what do we do while we wait?

The gospel that day told the story of God dividing the people: the wise and learned AND the childlike. We all strive to be the wise and learned, especially in this world of science and logic that I’ve chosen, and oftentimes we assume we already ARE. That's more often that not the problem, when we start to think we’ve figured it all out. The gospel’s story reminds us that God chose the people that were child-like.

We should all strive to be child-like. No, not ignorant or unaware of the realities of the world, on the contrary, it means to be open, constantly amazed and humbled. When the priest said this, I was like “woohooo, I’m as childish as anyone can get! I got this!” Apparently, he didn’t mean childish.

Open. Because we shouldn’t shut ourselves out to the experiences of the world. A child opens themselves up to the world to experience it fully – no discriminations, no judgments, no biases, they simply live life.

Constantly amazed. Child-like wonder allows us to see the beauty of anything and everything and thus remain passionate and zealous in our waiting. This means that we are able to maximize our experiences. In everything we do, we aim for the best (especially in our studies as med students).

Humble. As children, we are also made aware of our limitations and are thus humbled, as we recognize that our experiences are never fully maximized if not with other people and with some necessary life tools (hard work, determination and discipline for us med students).

If we live our lives according to those three foundations of being child-like we realize that the best way to wait and best way to show love, is to maximize our potential – to be the best that we can be, to live the best life we can live, and in so doing be worthy of God when He arrives.

For this particular time in my life, I find myself patiently waiting for something – as simple as passing the coming exam, as hopeful as the next semestral break, as corny as the start of an epic love story, as serious as the hint of growing up. While these aren’t exactly pressing concerns, the affirmation that patiently waiting (or CREATIVELY waiting as the priest put it) is not a waste of anybody’s time but the time of becoming the person I’m supposed to be when it comes felt nice.

Let’s just hope I will not be like the jews of the Lord’s time, who waited but didn't recognize Him when He came, but that’s a whole different issue altogether; for now, the waiting and the becoming.