By Amy Williams

She was dragging a tote of markers, crayons and puzzle pieces behind her across the floor, waiting for her parents to leave so she would have my undivided attention. I had told her we would play with everything she owned “when the grownups left.”  That was the night that Harper told me in all of her three-year-old seriousness that I wasn’t a grown up. I was just tall, she said. In that moment, I saw myself the way she did. The Auntie that will pretend to be an elephant, let her have ice cream for dinner, and has never once enforced bed time.

And I knew that at three-years-old, she was already the best friend I’d ever have.  She’s already taught me more about living than any adult I’ve ever known.

She loves without expectation

Harper has never had her heart broken. She’s never been fired from a job. She’s never had to worry about money. She wakes up every day absolutely certain that today is going to be fun. She knows she will be safe and she is pretty sure that every person she meets that day is going to want to make her smile. That’s a pretty good way to go through life.

Because this has been her experience so far, she has no reason to expect anyone will hurt her, disappoint her, or betray her, so she just loves people. She has no expectations of me other than that I will just love her back.

Loving without expectation would change the world if only we didn’t lose that three-year-old ability as we age. If our love lives weren’t riddled with disappointments that changed the way we loved, we’d all love like three year olds. When a three-year-old tells you they love you, they mean it. They don’t worry that you won’t say it back or that you’ll let them down, that you won’t call, that you’ll ever stop loving them. All their hearts know is that they love you, without expectation and without fear.

Nothing is more important than fun

When faced with a task, Harper immediately starts to figure out how she can make it fun. Time to clean up the playroom? Perhaps it would be fun if we pretended to be elephants that were cleaning up with our trunks. Bedtime? Not her favorite part of the day, but she can usually get someone to tell her an imaginary tale of a princess. No candy at dinner? Licking the strawberry juice off the plate is just as sweet, and even more fun.

What if I faced my day like that? When faced with another Monday at work, maybe I can share a laugh with a colleague today, or have lunch with a friend I haven’t seen often enough.  Maybe I can make a research project fun by pretending that the result will save a princess from a tower. If an elephant can clean up the playroom with its trunk, surely I can find a way to make a Monday in my office fun.

Tomorrow is irrelevant

Try explaining to a three-year-old that in another few months, weeks, or days, something is going to happen. It doesn’t matter if it is something fun or something to dread, it is meaningless if it’s not going to happen today. We’re going on vacation in the fall, and it’s an abstract concept. She asks about it from time to time, but doesn’t give it a second thought. She doesn’t worry about the future. She lives as if there is no future.

Our adult lives would be far more enjoyable if we approached each day without anticipation or anxiety of our tomorrows. If we thought only of the twenty-four hours ahead of us, our lives would seem both simpler and fuller. We would recognize that we have everything we need to get through this day, and that would be enough.

Learning is fun

Harper has asked me why the cat meows, why water moves, and why she’s not allowed to drive my car.  She’s not testing her boundaries (yet), she’s not arguing, she just really wants to know why things are the way they are. She wants to learn everything. Learning is fun and important and exciting, and it has nothing to do with preparing for a job, or accomplishing a task, or passing a test. Learning is a necessary component of her day and sometimes it is a profound question, like why she can’t know my great-grandmother. Other times, she asks why she’s not allowed to pee in a plastic pool. But she’s always learning, and explaining mysteries to her has made me a better learner, too.

We lose that simple desire to learn somewhere along the way. When learning becomes about passing a test or landing a promotion, we forget that learning is fun. Everything should be a question. We should always end a sentence with “why?”.  If we all ask “why” just one more time each day, we’ll have a much better understanding of ourselves, each other, and our environment.

When we reach our adult years, we think that we have learned. That we know how to love. That we have created, or at least have the capacity to create, the life we want.  We’re wrong.  Having a three-year-old best friend has shown me that I’ve been missing the important parts of life. Harper has taught me that if I open my heart, have fun, live for today, and stay curious, my life is much better than I could have ever imagined.

I can’t believe I haven’t always had a three-year-old best friend. And now, my greatest, most important challenge will be making sure that she doesn’t grow out of the beautiful mindset like the rest of us have.

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Amy Williams is a practicing attorney, aspiring writer, and devoted auntie attempting to see the world through a three year old's eyes. She can be found at describingmysocalledself.blogspot.com.

Photo: BIllionPhotos.com
Published: June 6, 2016