TAKE YOUR TIME

"Personal relationships, of course, not only take time, they take 'quality time.' This is especially true with children, where what matters is not only the number of hours we spend but also the attention we give, the love we show, the extent to which we enter into the child's world instead of dragging him or her into our own. Schedules are fine at the office, but children have a sense of time that is very different - and much more natural. They don't know about appointments and parking meters and living in the fast lane, and we cannot make them understand. All we can do is hurry them along.

"We adults can learn to slow down enough to enter their world; it's not their job to speed up and join ours. Where is the hurry?"

- Eknath Easwaran, from "Take Your Time"