This weekend we went to Shuh Farms in Mount Vernon with the cousins. We bought 154 pounds of pumpkins and carted them back to Seattle today. I’ve been thinking about the experience.
The kids ran into the pumpkin patch and were quickly carrying back any and every pumpkin they came across. Little discernment or deliberation. Just – that’s a pumpkin – it’s going in the wheel barrow.
Finally I told them I was going to pick one and I walked much further down the dirt road and looked at as many pumpkins as I could trying to find the perfect one. Finally I picked one up and carried it back. It was a good pumpkin.
The kids continued to pick pumpkins until the barrow was full.
Once we got the pumpkins back to the house and laid them out I realized how unique each of the ones the kids had picked was. Odd shapes and sizes. Long stems and vines still attached. And then the one I picked was … boring.
Somehow the kiddos had managed to pick better pumpkins. How?
Well, for one it wasn’t about the perfect pumpkin. It was about picking pumpkins, which they did with gusto and squeals of delight. One pumpkin wasn’t better than another. It was just a pumpkin. And pumpkins are fun to pick. They didn’t have an idea in their mind of what a pumpkin should be so all of them were awesome.
Kids have such a wonderful way of immersing themselves in an experience. And it allows them to see things without judgement or to fixate too much on the outcome. They got a barrow full of pumpkins. Mission accomplished. And they had fun doing it.
Perhaps there’s something to be gained by taking this approach with other things in our life. Being more playful and less outcome focused. At the end of the day what will you remember more? Your perfect pumpkin that will eventually rot? Or the joys of running through a field and dumping pumpkins into a barrow with abandon while spending time with family?
