The Toddler: North Star and Role Model

— body language by Mia Đặng —

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Oh, look at the toddler! Just look at her go!

She asks for her “yes!” She hollers her “no!”

She wonders, she dances, she cries and she sings,

She reaches right out for the shiniest things.

Then somewhere in "growing," she buried her art,

She hushed twenty-eight little songs of her heart.

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The toddler knows! The toddler shows!

The way that vibrant living goes!

They’re your lighthouses to guide your grown-up life,

Your best role models, they’re your brightest lights!

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There's Asking, Refusing, there's Wonder and Awe,

There's Silliness, Wildness that follows no law,

There's Crying and Dancing and Sovereignty's glee,

Twenty-eight beauties still begging, "Free me!"

Now some say that Anger and Peace cannot mix,

But watch how the toddler handles it slick:

She thunders her storm, then it's over and by,

The sky is all blue and her thunder's run dry.
 

A man was once offered good pay for his aid.

"Oh, what did I do? Should I really get paid?"

His tongue tied itself up in "am I worthy or not?"

Simply ask a wee toddler what he has forgot!

If someone's delighted and offers a treat,

She takes it with thanks and stomps happy feet!

She'd think it plain crazy—yes, crazy!—to shove

Away what the universe offers with love.

Grown-ups somehow think they know more than that tot.

The toddler is wiser than "deserving or not"!

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"But fairness!" you cry. "Is the bargain quite fair?"

If both hearts are happy, the “fair's” already there.

Yes, use what you know, as a strategist would,

To grow the long view the way that you could,

But "should" and "should-nots," with their finger-wagging frowns,

Are toxic old tyrants that kill the best deals in town.
 

The toddler knows! The toddler shows!

The way that vibrant living goes!

They’re your lighthouses to guide your grown-up life,

Your best role models, they’re your brightest lights!

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"But won't we grow grabby? Won't asking run wild?"

Yet grabbing's the mark of the buried-up child!

When your essences breathe, then the asking runs clean;

It's smothering that makes them turn grasping and mean.

For toddlers, survival is never in doubt—

So grasping's a symptom of shutting them out.

And “noes” do the trimming wherever they grow;

The garden self-tends where the neighbors say “no.”

You can't mind the gate where others stand,

But your own noes and yeses are held in your hands.

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Now grown-ups know things that a toddler does not,

The long view, the context, the whole of the plot.

So essence stays constant while form learns to bend:

You'll ask like a child and with others you can blend.

The root is the root, though many branches are new,

Twenty-eight fundamentals stay because they are you.

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And Sovereignty! Oh, what a crown we once wore,

Till we handed our liking-ourselves right out the door!

Reclaim your own throne! And if another drifts away,

That distance with them is the best way they stay.

It’s the most honest bond that you two can allow.

So choose courage and watch your stars shine with a “Wow!”

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This isn't a dogma, a rule, or a creed,

Just give it a try, experiment and see.

Just guide by these stars, give that toddler a chance,

And watch whether living starts freshly to dance.

And skeptics who'd not even give it a try?

The burden is theirs—let them tell us all why!

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The toddler knows! The toddler shows!

The way that vibrant living goes!

They’re your lighthouses to guide your grown-up life,

Your best role models, they’re your brightest lights!