Babies Don’t Give Up On Walking, Right?

I have two wonderful daughters. I vividly remember watching them learn how to walk. My oldest daughter was absolutely incredibly excited about life. Prior to three months old she learned to roll. She took advantage of this skill and rolled literally all over our home. Rolling became her main method of transportation. It was fun and funny to watch how this tiny baby was not going to let anything limit her adventurous desire to explore her surroundings. Just shy of 5 months old, she learned to pull herself by holding onto tables and chairs and to walk around holding onto them. When she was at the end of a table and wanted to move elsewhere and could not get a connection from another piece of furniture, she would push off the table, fall backwards as straight as a board and hit her head on the floor. She would cry for a minute and then roll to the next piece of furniture. Try as I might to teach her to crawl, she did not develop this skill until after she was walking on her own! At ten months old, she took her first step without a hand or a piece of furniture and has been walking ever since!

My second daughter is only 15 months younger than my first. Her methods of learning to walk were just a bit different. She did not roll like my first daughter. She rolled a little, but then quickly learned to crawl. From crawling, again around 5 months old, she pulled herself up using furniture to hold onto. Then, at 10 months old, she took her first steps alone.

During this process of learning how to walk, my daughters never once seemed overwhelmed. They never looked to me as if they felt defeated, day after day of trying. They never even seemed overly determined. It was absolutely something that seemed as if they took for granted. They were just going to attain the ability of walking, and therefore grant themselves the freedom of self-mobility! Which, of course, soon after had me seriously chasing them!

This is a picture of all babies, because unless we have a physical impediment, we can ALL walk. We take this skill and ability for granted, but we ALL went through this process of learning, and it took months of daily, constant practice! We never gave up. We never assumed that this freedom was not for us. We believed that this miraculous ability was inherently ours to enjoy!

Then. . . we grow up, and suddenly, many things are a challenge. Whether or not we can achieve success or accomplish our goals is no longer a given. It is not something we take for granted. Every person has something they feel is not something they will get, or get to achieve. Many of us simply resign ourselves to a mediocre life, or a life much less than we conjured up as children. Suddenly there are all kinds of obstacles that are bigger than us and bigger than our willpower, our faith and our strength – at least that is what we believe.

Using this one thought, this one reality, this one truth, we can all move far beyond where we think we can. Just DON’T STOP. Babies don’t. You don’t have to either!