four important words.

The other night at dinner Kevin said to the kids, “Hey guys.  I want to teach you four incredibly important words.”

I honestly cannot recall if we were chatting about passing the salt correctly or climbing trees or using inside voices.

I just know he said he had four important words he wanted them to learn.

And so we all listened.

Maybe some of the kids thought it would be a joke.  Kevin’s kind of a jokester.  They know this about him.  But he wasn’t really wearing his joke-y-dad face.  He was more like wearing his serious-dad face.

He stared at the watching eyes of his little people around the table.  He leaned closer to the table’s edge.  He spoke …

“When we are visiting friends and they aren’t playing the game you want to play, when a situation isn’t going the way you had planned, when you don’t get your way, when you are losing at Monopoly, when the food on your plate isn’t your favorite choice, when your first pick t-shirt is still in the laundry – tell yourself these four words.  It’s not about me.”

It’s not about me.

I sort of chuckled to myself as he delivered his speech.

I was thinking something like this: Yes.  Right.  True.  Those five kiddos certainly need to learn that life is not about them.  That’s smart.  They need to know that.  Good stuff.  Right on.  Yeah.  Listen up to that kids.

In the week or two that has followed Kevin’s announcement and instruction, I’ve been thinking about that phrase.

It’s not about me.

So have the kids.  Multiple times in various situations they have reminded one another (mostly in love) –  it’s not about me.

And over and over again – life situations have been smacking me in the face that allow me to be reminded –

It’s not about me.

You guys.  It really isn’t.

And yet.  And yet I spend so much time acting as if it was.  Believing that it is.

In fact, mostly, I think I sometimes wish it was.  I sometimes wish that life was about me.  My heart is drawn to be center stage, to make all situations and all events funnel right down to how they affect me.

It’s a mess really.

My brain – that is.  My ability to turn anyone’s story and anyone’s situation into something focused on me.  As if it were, in actuality, all about me.

Which it isn’t.

It is not.

It’s not about me.