What I find impressive about Caine's Arcade

Caine's Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

My husband turned me onto this amazing video--well worth the 11 minutes to watch!

And while the main theme is how creative this boy is, and how the power of the internet can change a life, there are other lessons I noticed that may be less obvious:

• I am impressed with the man who made the video for taking the time to notice and talk to Caine.  Unfortunately, I am like most of the other adults who walked right by him, not even bothering to reply to his attempts to engage them in his arcade.  Nirvan really is someone who lives in the moment, and was able to pause from the rush of life long enough to see and appreciate this wonder right in front of him.
• I am impressed not only with Caine's ingenuity, but also his patience and steadfastness.  I cannot even imagine dragging my kids to work in a shop every day all summer long, without thousands of dollars in video gaming equipment, and intolerable amounts of whining, "I'm bored....!"   Now, maybe he did  whine or complain sometimes, but I didn't get that vibe from what I saw of him.  And even if he likes going to the arcade too, what he created was a result of hours and hours of NOT playing video games. *That* really impressed me.
• I am impressed by Caine's father's encouragement and tolerance.  Not every shop owner would allow their child's project to take over the front entrance of their livelihood.  And there is no way Caine was able to buy all those calculators with the one $2 Fun Pass he sold to Nirvan.

Of course, the punchline to all this is I told my boys they were banned from video games after seeing what a boy with time and imagination can do.  Teddy shot back, "Hey, his parents had tons of boxes for him to work with!"  I reminded Teddy of the 4-5 cardboard boxes dissolving in our backyard in the rain.  We saved them from our dishwasher and other large purchases in the last year.  He shrugged, "Oh, yeah, forgot about those...." and returned to his computer games.  SIGH.

Time with Friends is a Big Rock

So, to put the title of this post into perspective, there is a story told by Steven Covey about making priorities in your life.  If you haven't heard about the "Big Rocks in Life", You can read it here.  It's worth a look.

Work has been a bear since last September, and add in the holiday stress, New Year's annual tax and paperwork travail, and I've been feeling a bit blue lately.

This week and last, I did something I have not had time to do in quite a long time.  A sew meet with my girlfriends.  Even though I was tired, and lots on my mind, like shaping my children to be productive and pleasant citizens of society, and world peace, I went anyway tonight.

We chatted, made each other laugh, embarrassed whatever children were present.  And there is just something in that mix of nonsense that releases some endorphins or something.  I am still stressed about work, but a little less so.  I am still worried about the state of the world, but a little less so.  Still wishing I didn't have decades ahead of me of working, striving, saving, etc., but a little less so.

Time with friends is one of the Big Rocks in my life.  I'm going to try harder not to let the sand take up all the space.

For the love of books

I love books, and while the argument for the advantages of e-readers are starting to make sense to me, I can't let go of the tactile joy of turning pages and smelling the paper and ink.  The first video below made the rounds last year, and I loved it then.  The second video is the sequel.  I love them both!