Making Beds

Many of us parents have harassed our kids to make their beds each morning with various degrees of success. Yet none may have come close to this Navy Seal Admiral in articulating why it actually matters. When a person accomplishes things in their life that the average person cannot even begin to fathom, they are somehow also able to distill lessons they learned along the way, into truly simple pieces of wisdom that have impact. Listening to this, I was thinking about my reasons to J when she was young why making your bed each morning is important. 

First off, I did not have nearly as cohesive an argument. Second, my delivery fell far short and finally I changed tactics frequently to see what would stick. In the end the job got done, but it was not because J was transformed at a fundamental level - able to tie the action of making her bed each morning to her life's larger purpose. That is the value of a solid, good argument delivered by someone who speaks from lived experience. It is one thing for a kid to reluctantly make their bed to avoid getting nagged and also do what's expected of them but it is a whole another matter to see so big a picture that it fundamentally alters their world-view.