This morning as I was helping Abby, my three-year-old granddaughter, out of our van, she spontaneously said to me, “Papa, you are the best” [slight pause] “ever” [slightly longer pause] “in the whole wide world.” I’m not sure what prompted this exclamation or what it was that made me the best or why it had taken her three years to notice this truth about me, but it did my heart good to be viewed as the “best ever in the whole wide world.”
I have been known to rail against the cultural phenomenon of awarding prizes, trophies and accolades to every student in the class simply because they are in the class and not because they actually did anything of note. But I have to tell you, being given this epithet from Abby, not on the basis of a studied comparison of all other Papas but simply because I’m HER Papa was water for my soul.
Maybe there is something to be said for more freely giving the people around us a word of affirmation, even if we can’t quantify exactly what it is that makes them special to us and the world around them. Sometimes just being part of our world is reason enough.
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