#9 Embrace the mess.
Children are messy. There's no getting around this. It is how they learn. Eating, playing - the world is a huge laboratory of experimentation at their ready hands. And no matter how many times you clean up, there is another mess waiting to be created. But the mess is also a sign of life lived, of lessons learned, of new skills acquired, of attempt, of play, of activity. Sometimes getting ahead requires getting in the muck of things and getting dirty. Sometimes there is art in mess. I think about the times when my surroundings are in complete physical chaos, and how it usually coincides with the times when I am at my busiest, living and pursuing things that make me happy. I think about when my son was first born, and how I had to let go of preoccupation with how the house looked because of all the things I just didn't have time to handle - I was too busy being a new mom and bonding with and caring for my son. I look back on the times when I experienced the most growth, emotionally, as a person, and they were usually during the "messier" periods of my life, the difficult times. As a creative person, more often than not, the creations I am most proud of were created not according to some well-constructed formula, but out of messy, chaotic free-form. I do not mean to suggest that we abandon all forms of organization and cleanliness and order, I don't think a complete absence is necessarily constructive or healthy. But just as there is value to order, there is value to mess and we should just embrace it when we find ourselves in its midst.
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