Delayed gratification

I don't know if you've seen that experiment they've done with young children, filming them being offered a sweet, and being told that if they wait ten minutes with the sweet in front of them without eating it they will be given a second sweet?

Apparently they then tracked these children, and the ones who could wait to get the double reward, resisting the immediate one, performed much better in school throughout their school career than the ones who couldn't wait.

They believe the ability to delay gratification is a measure of a child's intelligence.

I was thinking that my early morning run is a similar type of experiment.

The temptation of an extra fifteen to thirty minutes in bed most mornings is a constant temptation, especially these dark cold mornings. And yet, forcing myself to resist the temptation of the duvet to hit the pavement (day 375 today) always gives me at least double the reward that the extra time in bed would provide.

Does that make me intelligent or am I just a slightly disturbed masochist?

The children know

I've let two weeks slip by again since my last blog entry.

As I count the number of days left to complete my year of running a mile every day, and tallying my total number of consecutive days, I'm also wondering if this will be the day when I will become a grandfather.

It's all very exciting.

I do love small children. They are perfect examples of what it's like to live in the present moment. No regrets or embarrasment of things that they wished they hadn't done, and no worries or concerns about the future, whether they will make a mistake or get hurt.

And the funny thing is that we were all like that when we were little.

If that is the case, which it plainly is, then there is nothing new for us to learn about being present to our every experience of life rather than wasting our time regretting and worrying.

If there's nothing new to learn, surely it must be easy to release the accumulated and non-productive skills of regretting and worrying.

What would be left is the joy and excitement of each new experience, which every moment clearly is.