Children seem to have a handle on this, so why don’t we? Just this morning I was sitting with my toddler son watching his new favorite show (as they seem to change daily). This show featured Asian culture, language, and philosophy. On this particular episode, the characters wanted to participate in various outdoor activities and take advantage of the warm spring weather; it began to rain however and everyone (but the main character) became sad as they focused on what they could no longer do.

Before I go any further into the episode let me say that I often find that basic, fundamental life lessons and philosophies are embedded in places we don’t pay attention to. Many times we might find them to be rudimentary or too simple to give them a second thought, but this can cause us to miss out on valuable information we need to remember. For instance, you would hardly believe that an animated picture intended for toddlers could ever offer any valuable truth you may need as an adult, but the scenario described in the above cartoon can show otherwise. The behavior that the characters displayed is really not so different to many of our adult experiences.

So what is this lesson that I keep referring to? Well when it began to rain each character within the cartoon (minus the main character) began to display frowns and long faces. They immediately started hammering away in conversation about what it was they wanted to do that day. They couldn’t help but to express their keen disappointment in what it was they could not do. Now while the characters continued to recant their stories over and over, the main character was as happy as ever. She danced, skipped, and hopped in the rain and after a few moments she noticed her friends weren’t alongside her. The funny thing was that even though they were within proximal distance of one another they were really all in separate realities due to their mindsets. The sad characters could not understand the happiness of the main character and vice versa. The main character however had a very simple approach to the rainy weather, which she eagerly shared with her friends; she told them “to think about what you can do and not what you can’t do,” while she showed them all the fun they could be having in the rain.

As child-like as this story line is, it is no different from our own adult reactions when we experience rainy weather in our life experiences. We berate the things we are unable to do rather than consider the things we can do. Even a simple toddler’s show can offer some familiar wisdom in such circumstances: “think about what you can do.”