Stopping along the way to play

Today I got to take my granddaughter out in the snow to make her first snowman and do her first snow angel. I would tell her that we needed more snow and I would turn around and she had walked 30 or 40 ft to get more when there was some right in front of her. She dredged through the snow carrying as much as she could and would laugh and giggle every time that she got close to me because she discovered how to throw a snow ball.
Needless to say the process of building the snowman was a bit of a long drawn out task. But she was in no hurry she was just enjoying taking her time and having fun. As she usually does, she made me think about how I wish I could apply her outlook on life to my own. She is in no hurry and felt no pressure to complete the job of finishing what we had started. I thought about how so many people complained about the snow, the road conditions and the nuisances that the snowfall had created. But not my granddaughter. She just played until she was freezing and her little legs were give out from walking and running in this new playground that she hadn't truly experienced before. She didn't focus on the snowman like I did (trying to make it just the right size and looking like something that would win a snowman contest) - to her it didn't matter whether it even got finished or not and she could have cared less how symmetrical that the parts of the snowman were. I would (I'm ashamed to say) get a little flustered at first because evidently I was basing more emphasis on creating the snowman than just enjoying doing it. Then as if one blow by a snowball had jarred some sense into me, I realized that it didn't matter what the snowman looked like - that what the important thing to do was look at the snow through her eyes.
How she looked at that snowman is how I need to look at life in general; that the basic things that we needed to build it were there and all we had to add to the equation was our time...in our own time. This is the philosophy that I should apply to my life - that I have all the essentials that I need to get through life- it just takes a little time and patience to make it work. And it's okay if along the way of getting the job done if I want to stop and play and not worry about what the final outcome will be, then I will enjoy it more. It doesn't always have to be perfect and I shouldn't worry about always making sure it's done right according to a blueprint. The end result will be what it's going to be so if I want to venture off the beaten path from time to time and take the scenic route to get to the next step [like she did when I would send her for more snow] then that's fine, because eventually it will get done.
My new years resolution was to start enjoying life more, to take more chances and to actually live life. Peyton reminded me of that today as we worked on the snowman and stopped to play along the way.
It's amazing what we can learn looking at life through the eyes of a child. It really is a playground out there - our lives that is; and if we want to stop and play and lose track of what our mission in life is...well that's okay- because when we lose focus of what we are supposed to be doing and just do what we want to...well that's when life really happens.