He asked me if I'd pay him a dollar to tie five flies. I said sure. That's the first wooly bugger, there. I think it looks scrumptious.
But then, he tied another and went on to something else. For now, he was satisfied with two flies and no dollar.
Sometimes, our goal-oriented, adult selves sit down in perplexity over things like this. We wonder if we're not teaching follow-through, we wonder if this means that he'll hop from thing to thing all through life, not finishing what he started, not knowing when to settle. We worry.
Sometimes we get so worry-wound that we hardly notice what just happened: The boy sat at the vise of his own accord, with feathers, tools, and thread, and he tied two flies. He did that! He engaged his imagination and his new-found knowledge, and created something that didn't exist before. He satisfied a desire that burst inside and moved him to action. He followed a process, he demonstrated and described, he produced. He made a deposit into himself that would grow for the rest of his life. Who cares that there weren't five flies and a dollar in the end?
Let's give him room to set goals, and then adjust them as he needs to. Let's let him learn that part. Instead of micro-managing, let's celebrate the unfolding, the learning, and the growing.
Let's high-five the boy on his two-fly day.
