A friend recently stumped me with what is possibly the most fascinating question in the world:
“What captivated you when you were 9? What was it that you spent every spare minute of your unstructured time doing?”
The concept behind the question is that that thing we did with our free time when we were approximately 9 has a lot to tell us about our life purpose. So, let’s jump in, shall we?
When I was 9 I:
- Read constantly. There was a period of time when my mother limited me to reading two books a day. I stretched that limit through starting one book the night before, finishing it plus a second and reading most of a third the next day. Insane.
- When I wasn’t reading, I was outside, running around the farm, creating imaginary worlds and embarking on incredibly detailed and magical adventures with my brother.
In short, I was either inside reading about the adventures of others or I was outside, creating my own.
My grandfather’s ranch:
My mother’s parents lived about a 4-hour drive from us, down in Oklahoma. We would visit several times a year – events that were always greatly anticipated.
My grandparents lived in Paradise – a cattle ranch with acres and acres of open pasture complete with a creek running directly through the middle of it.
The creek was small by normal creek standards and yet it had cut its way deep into the earth forming a mini canyon. Likely only 20 or so feet deep, to my 8 or 9 year old eyes, this canyon was vast and infinitely exciting. And the creek itself – oh my! The adventures that awaited!
We spent entire days out just roaming about – being explorers of the vast unknown.
Every day led to new delights, new adventures, and new territories to explore.
One year, much to our delight, we discovered a tree that had fallen across the creek and, for the first time ever, we were able to cross the rushing water and begin to explore the uncharted territories of the other side. The excitement! It could not be contained.
Of course, there were hazards to be aware of…
…snakes lurking behind the occasional fallen tree limb, deep gopher holes that could easily twist or break an ankle, the creek itself and, of course, the bulls.
None of that deterred us in any way. We had roles to play, adventures awaiting, new land to explore.
Only hunger would eventually pull us away from our explorations and back to the Land of the Adults.
Looking back, I can see how much I learned from those adventures.
How much those moment have influenced my life now.
Then, we were fully engaged in the moment, always venturing just a little further into the unknown. Stretching our boundaries, exploring our limitations. And yet, we had support. We knew our parents weren’t that far away.
Plus, we had each other. We were each others’ best Allies.
What did we learn?
We learned to:
- take calculated risks: for instance, timing our crossing of the bull pen – scary!
- know where we were in relation to grandpa’s house at all times;
- support each other. There was this complete, though unstated, understanding that we had each others’ back if anything bad happened.
- be a part of a team and collaborate/plan our route together.
- engage and trust our senses – our eyes, our ears, our felt-sense (I recall several times when we changed direction simply because the direction we were going had a ‘bad’ feel).
- be in the moment. We never embarked on our mission with some outcome in mind. We just couldn’t wait to get out there so we could discover what was out there.
Basically, we learned some pretty impressive life skills.
Of course, back then, we didn’t think of it as learning life-skills – we were just kids out in my grandpa’s pasture, which happened to have this amazing creek running through it, exploring the day away.
Looking back, I feel this sense of nostalgia.
I felt so alive and engaged as we explored the creek and surrounding pasture-land.
I long for that sense of engagement, of curiosity, of risk-taking, of being outside for hours/days at a time!, to be more present now, in my daily life.
I can see how these experiences have so much to offer me now.
That sense of adventure, of exploration, is something that I consistently bring into my work with clients.
And, this sense of adventure, of fully engaging with my surroundings, is something I’m slowly re-discovering more and more in my personal life as well.
Comment Magic:
What were your passions when you were 9? Was there some thing or activity that you turned to the moment you had a moment free from your parents and other obligations? If so, do tell!
Portlanders! A new 4-week Shiva Nata series is beginning on May 10th. We will be using Shiva Nata to help us get out of our heads and into our senses. I’m super excited about this series as it combines two of my favorites things: Senses and Shiva Nata. Check it out here.
I like this post! That farm sounds amazing. This is a great reminder, too, that we’re so resourceful on our own. You figured things out, without instruction, when you were only nine. And lots of other people do that, too. Our senses have so much to teach us.
“Our senses have so much to teach us.” Yes! Exactly. 🙂
I felt so alive and engaged as we explored the creek and surrounding pasture-land.
I long for that sense of engagement …
I have been running into a brick wall built out of this visceral-nostalgia-feeling a dozen times recently. I miss that feeling of complete connection with life and the land and myself. It feels like everything’s too… sterilized, digital, distant now. But I don’t want to live in a bubble or a city, kept away from the things that share my blood in the earth.
To answer your original question…
When I was 9, we hadn’t yet started building our new house, so I still lived where I was born, a small two-bedroom house on an acre of land in the middle of the Appalachian mountains. We gave my pony a good chunk of the more level bits of our property, and the rest was across the road and down the hill, wooded and brambled and sloped. We had the dog out back, the truck out front, and no limits on how far into the forest I could go, though I didn’t usually go past the abandoned strip mine. And since I didn’t yet have the manual typewriter that would blow my mind in a couple years, I spent my time acting out stories with my toys and then scribbling them into my notebooks–or I was running in the woods, doing much the same thing you were – creating my own adventures. I hadn’t yet gotten the impressive book collection I would in my pre-teens, so reading wasn’t as much of a constant as writing and playing were. Human-people almost never featured in either my stories or my adventures, and I was the dog or cat of the household more often than the child.
I want more of that rich freedom in my adult life.
Wow! I so love that you were the dog or the cat in your stories and adventures. That’s awesome. I can’t help but wonder just how much being an animal influenced how you used your senses and interacted with the land. I’d bet it made the connection even deeper.
Yes, I too am constantly attempting to figure out how to balance connecting with the natural world (the land/life/myself as you wrote) while living in a city. It’s not easy. It helps knowing there are others out there attempting the same.
I thought about this before, though I think I did it for childhood in general. 9 was 4th grade, I think? We had just moved to northern Michigan the year before. I read. A lot. (The library let the kids in our family ignore the 3 book rule otherwise most of us would have been back every day. 😉 I played in the swamp and woods around the house with siblings and neighbor kids and friends, building forts and playing games and adventuring and claiming/naming territory. In the summer, we were at the lake a lot, swimming and reading and eating. Or else we were at our grandparents, reading comics or playing games. Our neighborhood was fantastic for kids – there was the swamp and a huge sand pit that was no longer in use and abandoned mines and tons of woods and the Big Hill (which, humorously, was not so big unless you were little). Basically, there was lots of reading and imagining and adventuring outdoors – all of which I love (and have) now. Yay.
You are definitely an inspiration for me. You truly seem to bring those childhood passions to life in your adult life. It’s beautiful!
I was a reader, too. I read everything I could get my hands on. Watching TV – all those TVLand classes: The Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, Gilligans Island, Mary Tyler Moore, MASH, Scooby Doo.
I started writing, singing, and acting around that age. I actually wrote and got to perform a play at school titled “Night at the Haunted Mansion.” Little embarrassing but I was very proud and very into it.
Also drew and doodled constantly. Learned to knit, hook rugs, and do needlepoint.
Listened to LP records. My parents had lots of the broadway musicals. I’d sit in the living room and listen while I read the album covers and thought about the actors on stage singing the song. My favorites were Jesus Christ Superstar and West Side Story.
Finally I loved animals and started horseback riding (nothing fancy, just went out on trail rides) and got gerbils.
Guess I was pretty much a loner and happy in my own creative bubble. But it was fun to do the play and performing stuff with other people.
Really enjoyed reading about your inner 9-year-old, Judy. So much creativity and vision! The play you wrote reminds me of the time me and my brother and cousins created and performed a full featured play in the hay barn on this same ranch. Such fun!
Thank you so much for reminding me of my childhood. Mine was spent everyday on the same farm so I probably didn’t realize what a treasure I had in my life. That space was so taken for granted but what an important part it played. As a child, my friends and I spent so hours playing in the creek, on the fallen trees and in the Cimarron river. As a teenageer, we still spent so much time out there just walking, talking and dreaming. Perhaps this is why water and trees are still such an important part of my life and why, if I am to flourish, I’ve got to get out of Southwestern Kansas.
Ah! Really nice to be reminded that that creek had at least a couple generations of our bloodline playing in it and exploring the land around it. Thanks, Mom!
I was horse obsessed when I was a kid. At age nine, we had moved from Los Angeles to a more rural area, and our neighbors had ponies–Yay! Of course I was on a pony every chance I got. And books. At school, our teacher gave us a gold star for every book we read. One boy and I were totally off the page.
I am in my 50’s and nothing has changed :-). I am in love with a special mare, and still read a lot of books. And blogs.