Member-only story
Wisdom from a 5-Year-Old
Because you don’t have to be old to know how to live
The four things you need to know to know “enough”
Swimming
My sweet, imaginative, energetic 5-year-old friend, Elizabeth, has it all figured out. Just the other day, she told me the four things she needs to know in order to grow up. If she knew these things, she’d know “enough.”
“So what things do you really need to learn, Elizabeth?”
“Well, first of all, SWIMMING.”
I’d agree with her one-hundred percent, as would my dad. Daddy always told his daughters that we had to be able to do three activities, and his first requirement was that we knew how to swim. (The other two were driving and typing.) Of course, he wanted to be sure that none of his girls would ever drown, but more than that, he wanted us to enjoy water.
So if Elizabeth’s “first thing” was the same as Daddy’s, I knew she was on to something. I found it fascinating that an almost-5-year-old child, who freely admits that she doesn’t really like getting her face wet because it tickles, and an almost 75 year-old-coot, (my dad’s own language, not mine) who has swum across the Ohio River on several occasions, both put swimming as the first requirement of things you need…
