The timer dings! It’s time for the next group of excited children to rush out into the muddy muck and claim a raft. For the next five minutes, the children, who have grabbed a bowish oar and perched themselves precariously upon a piece of floating wood, happily balance and pull, balance and pull. One little girl loses her right shoe in the brown sludge but is too afraid to hunt for it. Another girl gets very close to the foot bridge, but with patience and strength, maneuvers herself free. A boy challenges another to a friendly battle as their rafts collide.

While I am watching, not one child falls in. Not one child calls for his mom or looks nervously to the shore. Is it because they know the water is shallow? I think not. It’s because balancing on these things is natural to them. Even with the initial “figuring out” that each and every child did in order to get on without falling over, there was no evident doubt, no giving up. Balancing on that board was a fact before it was a reality.

Perhaps, I think to myself, this is what I need to nurture: an innate sense of balance, one in which I do not question whatever obstacle is put in my path. Steady, one foot at a time, breathe, up comes the leg, then the other, breathe again and Wa-la! Success. Balancing. No doubt. No stress. Hey, this is fun. Let’s pull the oar a bit and sail through the murky waters with confidence…