Sunday 12 December 2021

Beckett @ 6

This post is about 6 months late.

Beckett turned 6 on June 18th, and as she always does, gave me a masterclass on life.

We spent the long weekend celebrating her birthday and playing and having fun with her birthday gifts. 

Many of the gifts were related to airplanes (maybe we have a rocket scientist in the making).






As you can see in the pictures, we made paper planes, and assembled gliders, and then made one out of cardboard. The cardboard one took the most time to make, wasn't aerodynamic by the looks of it, wasn't very pretty. 

So when it came to taking the planes down for a flight, I took the paper planes, the glider, our kite, and started heading down. But Beckett being Beckett stopped me.

'Pappa, what about the cardboard plane?'

'I don't think it'll fly, Aarvi.'

'Why?'

'Because of how it is made. Its structure seems to be incompatible with the principles of flight.'

'Heh?'

'Trust me, it won't fly!'

'But Pappa, we've got to try. If we don't try, we will never know!'

I run a startup for a living, swear by the power of the possible, day-in and day-out distort reality for myself and for others, to bring highly unlikely possibilities to life. That I would discard a possibility without trying it, simply because of my estimation of the laws of physics, felt like one tight slap on my being.

Naturally, my jaw-drop, as usual, was a sight to behold.

So I gathered the cardboard plane along with the pieces of my shattered pride, but ever so grateful to Beckett, and headed to the park with her.

We had lots of fun flying all the different planes & the glider & the kite. 

The cardboard plane didn't fly. But we wouldn't have known for sure if we hadn't tried. It also led to Beckett asking me why it wouldn't fly and me teaching her about principles of flight - Lift, Drag, Thrust, and Gravity. It also led us to discuss and figure out what we needed to do to make the cardboard plane fly.

Our children are Sorcerers gifted to us by the Universe. They send us on wild treasure hunts, push us to go pursue our personal legends, in the guise of teaching them how to learn, discover, and enjoy life.* 

While we think that we are raising them, it is, in fact, they who compel us to go see the Pyramids and discover how beautiful they are. Without them we would not venture to see the Pyramids, nor discover how beautiful they are.* 

Beckett now wants a rocket for Christmas.

* The references are from The Alchemist. Reading it may be a good use of your time if they didn't make sense or resonate with you.

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