Learning to walk - Ohpaw Theron

My dear angel,

Once again your ohpaw has graced us with his beautiful words, so appropriate and so fitting. Dankie pa, dit is pragtig!

Our inability to remember how we learned to walk is probably the prime reason why some people give up so readily when they are faced with challenges in life. If only we can remember the time when we were learning to walk, we would not be so ready to give up without a fight.
But even before we learned to walk, we had to learn how to fall on our buttocks while trying to stand up on our own legs. Most of the times when we tried to stand up, we fell down again. Sometimes we cried when falling down, while at other times we giggled and laughed at ourselves. Every so often, it took us some time to pluck up the courage to stand up again, but get up we did, and today we can not only walk, we can run, jump, skip, and dance. So, even if it did take us a while to want to stand up again, we never waited too long to give it another shot.
There were times when someone was around to catch us, and to cheer us on. And there were also times when we picked ourselves up silently, without anyone watching. The numerous falls did not stop us from wanting to rise on our legs. Did we hurt when we fell? You bet we did. But our determination to rise up every time was all that mattered.
The question is, if everyone has been through this stage, shouldn’t we all have the same determination today to rise up every time we fall? Not only that, but we should remember how someone wiped away the mournful tears we cried whenever we hurt. We should remember how someone – mommy or daddy, granny or grandpa, kissed away the pain. And we should remember how there always seemed to be someone to pick us up again when we fell. Nobody laughed at us when we fell. Nobody considered us weak or stupid. Nobody said we fell because we were arrogant, cocky, or conceited. On the contrary, everybody understood. And everybody wanted us to get up again. And Today? Today the very act of walking which once took so much effort seems like the easiest thing in the world to do. Because we persevered. Because SOMEONE cared. And because we knew that we had all been though the same “ordeal.” In short, we appreciated each other’s efforts to overcome life’s necessary obstacles.
TRULY, LIFE’S GREATEST LESSONS ARE ALREADY LEARNED IN CHILDHOOD.