Brooke getting ready to pick.
It is an annual tradition of our family to go pick strawberries. We go each year to a place near the Kentucky/Tennessee border. The kids always enjoy going and have gotten good at picking them. We try to make it fun by creating a contest to see who can pick the biggest strawberry and the weirdest one. Austin and Landon, the two boys, are competitive. Austin sets out to accomplish the task with vigor and determination. Landon, the 4 year old, spends his time worrying he will not win. In order to do so he solicits the help of the adults to give him their biggest or weirdest. This year he had several adults to schmooze since his Papa and Nana and aunt Ashley came on the trip.
But it is Brooke, our 7 year old little girl, that is the subject of this post. Brooke is our least competitive, and henceforth, the most easy-going. In golf, when she was young she could miss the ball 10 times and never get upset, just laugh and keep swinging. If the boys missed the ball 3 or 4 times, they were throwing the club down and pouting. When Amanda was picking near Brooke, Brooke offered this pearl of wisdom, “I just keep telling myself that we are not here to just find the biggest and the weirdest, but we are really just here to pick strawberries.”
This is Brooke’s secret that we all need to adopt! She would not allow herself to be drawn into the pressure of having to win! She released herself from the pressure, by telling herself the real reason we were there was to pick strawberries. Thus, it did not matter if she won or lost the contest, because she knew it was just a silly, fun contest.
This is positive thinking at its finest. It is a great perspective! While Landon worried and Austin sweated over the contest, Brooke didn’t worry or sweat and just had fun! I think there is a lesson there for all of us! We can get so wrapped up in the contests of life, that we forget the real purpose.
By the way, we never declared a winner, but there were some big and weird strawberries found by all participants, but in the end our goal was just to pick strawberries and we left with a small fortune of them!
Austin with a Weird One!
Landon with his bucket!
Caleb helping Brooke look for big ones!
Our family with the haul. This was not just for us!
