It was my pleasure to sub in the preschool this week. It hardly qualifies as a job... building towers, and serving apple slices to a dozen chatty kids. Even the time on the playground was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The worst fighting went like this. 

 

"He says I'm not a captain too."

 

The teacher tried to reassure her that she gets to decide what she is. Not the other boy. 

 

One of the books I read to them, although the word read is overstated, was Where's Waldo? If you are not familiar it is nothing but illustrations of an overcrowded mass of humanity, littered with stripes. The task is to find the little man with a red and white shirt and black glasses. There are a myriad of clever distractions, like striped bathing suits. His name is Waldo, and he goes wandering in unusual places, like a Roman ruin, or Atlantic City on the first warm day of summer. 

 

The two boys stood in front of me looking intently. One was curious, without being worried. He smiled as his eyes wandered over the pages, and he seemed unruffled whether he found the tiny man in three seconds or even not at all. The other boy was determined. Like a runner at the starting line. Finding Waldo was of great importance, and being first meant he won. Won what, I am not sure, as there were no prizes. If the other boy pointed first, he would discount the find, saying it was wrong or that he already saw it. Fortunately there was no conflict because the first boy was not in it to prove anything. He just thought it was fun. As fun as his stuffed wooly mammoth, who sometimes helped hunt. His name, the mammoth, not the boy, is Mammy. Appropriate. 

 

I wished I could somehow reassure the boy who at the tender age of four was already entangled with competition. He is absolutely precious just as he is. Whether he spies Waldo or not, whether he can run as fast as the wind, whether he can count to a hundred, he is wonderful. Even in a crowd of three hundred swimmers at the beach, his mother would find him whatever the color of his trunks. What's more she chooses him. She loves him. Even if he is not the speediest or the tallest or the whateverest. 

 

Some of us spend a large portion of our lives trying to be impressive. To get ahead. To find that illusive something that will prove we are worthwhile. But maybe it is not so crucial what other people call us. Lesser, or more. Maybe we get to claim our personhood in a crowded world where we can fall for the illusion that we are nothing special. 

 

Hopefully when the book is closed we get to find ourselves. The kind of prize that everyone can have. 

 

 "Very different is the case with those who trust in the Divine. These, notwithstanding they have care for the morrow, still have it not, because they do not think of the morrow with solicitude, still less with anxiety. Unruffled is their spirit whether they obtain the objects of their desire, or not; and they do not grieve over the loss of them, being content with their lot. If they become rich, they do not set their hearts on riches; if they are raised to honors, they do not regard themselves as more worthy than others; if they become poor, they are not made sad; if their circumstances are mean, they are not dejected. They know that for those who trust in the Divine all things advance toward a happy state to eternity, and that whatever befalls them in time is still conducive thereto."

-Heavenly Secrets 8478, Emanuel Swedenborg