"You Climbed Up There!"

"Teacher Tom, look at me!"

The boy called out from where he stood, clinging to the trunk of one of our playground cedars. He was standing on a root that raised him no more than six inches off the ground. If he had fallen, it wouldn't have been a fall.

"Baby steps" is the expression we use in moments like this: the first, tentative attempt to push the boundaries of our fear. A baby's first step is an act of falling forward, then trusting their legs to break that fall. I've had the privilege to witness several first steps and each time, the baby smiles. I don't know if it's from the thrill of accomplishment or a response to the adults who are cheering them on. I expect it's a bit of both.

The boy on the root was smiling as he called out to me. To be honest, I wasn't at first sure what he wanted me to look at so I said, "I'm looking at you!" matching my enthusiasm to his own. I knew this four-year-old boy to be intellectually precocious, but physically timid, not inclined toward what we generally think of when we worry about "risky play." It was this prior knowledge of his personality rather than my own concerns for his safety that allowed me to figure out that he wanted me as a witness to his act of courage. I added, "You climbed up there!"

As adults, we tend to be pretty good at responding to children who climb "too high," go "too fast," or play "too roughly." In fact, if you've read here for any length of time, you'll know that I think we tend to overreact, too often allowing our own catastrophic imaginations to take over. I suppose it's natural, on the other hand, that we often miss acknowledging these baby step acts of courage because they don't trigger our own fears. I mean, no one's going to get hurt falling from six inches.

Courage doesn't mean the same thing as fearless. For any act to be courageous, it must be done against a background of fear. Fear is necessary. "Complete certainty, safety, and a life of no fear is impossible," writes Brandon Webb in his book Mastering Fear. "There'll never be a point in your life where you'll think, "now's the right time, I'm totally prepared and at ease" . . . If you wait for fear to go away first, you'll never do it. Because the fear is never going away."

This boy stepped onto that root despite his fear. He thought he might be able to do it, but feared he would fall or fail or somehow get hurt. Every courageous act requires us to act in the face of this uncertainty. At some point, each of us must act without knowing, then live with the consequences. This, I think, is what defines human freedom.

It was nothing to be personally, but for this boy, this baby step was a transformative one. There is no second step without the first one. There he clung to that trunk, thrilled to be free. As the Ancient Greek historian and general put it, "The secret to freedom is courage." So we are meant to go, by both baby steps and by the giant steps of the gods, from one act of courage to the next, acting in the face of our fears, acting in the face of uncertainty. This is, in the end, what a life of purpose and meaning is all about.

As that boy stood there on his root, a girl who, like the boy, I knew to be intellectually precocious, yet physically timid, stepped carefully onto a slightly lower root beside him. The boy encouraged her, echoing me, "You climbed up there!"

******

I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!