Near the water’s edge
This young boy was too busy to notice I was taking photos of him as he worked.
At the beach at Yorktown, Virginia, March 2014
“Children instinctively choose to build near the water’s edge knowing that the water to sand ratio is vital, and I believe that they also know that at the end of the exercise their hard work will be reclaimed by the incoming tide. Even very young children know that they cannot take their creation home – I have never seen a child having a temper tantrum because it has to stay there…” — Niki Buchan
Recently I was chatting via Skype with a few of my fellow bloggers, and one of the things we talked about is how children’s play is their work; the way they learn about the world, and about life. For a child, play has much to teach.
At the beach, perhaps we too can learn from watching children building their sandcastles. As Buchan points out, they must find just the right mixture of sand and water to allow shaping a structure strong enough to stand firm until they complete their project. This often involves a good bit of trial and error. They labor with focused attention to produce something that likely will be gone by the end of the day, a work of art neither they nor anyone else will ever own. Clearly, the process is what they value more than the product.
Balancing elements, working for the joy of it, then letting go without sadness or regret…a lot to learn in an afternoon spent at play. I hope we can channel some of these same lessons as we go about the tasks that make up our days.
One year ago today:
This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: beach, children, learning, oceans, play, rivers, sand, sandcastles, seashore
Defeat Despair 