When Truman sat on Santa’s lap a couple weeks ago, he knew this much: the guy could bring him a special present. He doesn’t understand why or when or how it will happen {you should have seen the confusion on his face when I mentioned flying reindeer!}, but he knew the purpose of sitting on that jolly guy’s lap was to ask for something wonderful.
He asked for one thing: a
Thomas and The Jet Engine
DVD, which came out in 2004. He’d seen it pictured in a brochure that was tucked inside another old DVD. It features the covers of many other DVDs, but for some reason Tru only has eyes for this particular one.
I am confident Santa will come through for him, but the wait is excruciating. Tru asks to watch the DVD at least 100 times a day. I’m not exaggerating; this morning I counted six times in a 30 minute period. It’s like living with a three-year-old Alzheimer’s patient! No matter how many times I gently remind him we don’t have the DVD yet, that we have to wait and see if Santa brings it {not today, not tomorrow, but soon}, he often returns minutes later with the pamphlet, pointing to the DVD and asking to watch it now.
Tru’s approach is really not that different from an adult who prays for something special, then agonizes over the issue at hand. We’ve all been there, right? Practically begging the heavens above for a new job, a new love, a new baby, a great healing, a better boss, a bigger house, a happier life – and then, rather than leaving our request up to the powers that be, we try to force an answer to come quicker than it’s meant to or in just the way we’ve specified. We obsesses about it, worry about it, weep about it, get bitter about it, get jealous of others who already have it.
We make the wait excruciating.
The answers we grownups get are rarely quite as obvious as a DVD under the tree. But when we do get a response – whether it’s exactly what we’d asked for or something quite different – it’s often accompanied by a tinge of regret over the time we’d spent fretting over it. We realize, in a moment of clarity, that none of that anxious energy did any good.
Right now, Tru’s too little to realize that his obsessing over the DVD he wants is pointless. Santa has already heard his request, decided to grant his wish, wrapped it up with pretty paper and a bow, and will deliver it in due time. The way Tru continues to drive himself {and us} crazy with anxiety over whether it will come has no bearing on whether it will come. I bet he’ll feel so relieved that he doesn’t have to worry about it anymore. Truth is, he never needed to.