How to Live Life Like a Stumbling Infant

A year ago, I hosted my cousin, her husband, and their 1-year-old daughter, Edie, at my apartment in Lisbon. They were visiting from England, and this was my first time meeting my new niece.

At one point in the evening, Edie crawls over to the chair where her dad is seated, hoists herself up on to her feet, then starts to tug impatiently on his pant leg.

“She wants to practice walking,” he says.

He gets off the sofa and lifts up her tiny hands for support, then they both start walking carefully across my living room.

“This is new,” he says, while slowly guiding her. ”She just started doing this a few days ago.”

“Oh really!?” I exclaim. “That’s fantastic!”

In the movies, the “baby’s first steps” is always a huge moment for the family.

In my mind, babies go from crawling one day, to walking the next day, to running through parks and schoolyards the very next.

But mommy and daddy are surprisingly nonchalant about the whole thing.

“Oh no, there are WAY more stages to learning how to walk,” they explain to me:

• First she learned to crawl on the ground.
• Then she learned how to crawl upstairs.
• Then she learned how to crawl downstairs, which took several days, since she had to learn how to slide on her belly.
• Then she practiced standing with one of her parents picking her up by the waist and gently placing her feet on the ground.
• Then she did the same thing but with her parents holding her hands over her head.
• Then she learned how to pull herself up on to her feet using furniture or our legs…

There were so many steps — I couldn’t help but marvel at my niece’s tenacity.

As they explain each progression to me, Edie lets go of her dad’s grip and latches on to my sofa, slowly working her away alongside it with the help of her hands.

Apparently, this was her most recent stage of progress — stumbling from one piece of furniture to the next like a drunk person.

Since I haven’t spent much time with infants, I didn’t realize there were so many stages to the walking progression.

In other words, to master walking you LITERALLY need to take baby steps!

I was fascinated by the whole experience, but what struck me most about it was Edie’s facial expression.

Her brow was furrowed in concentration. Her eyes were wide open in attention. Her smile stretched from ear to ear in excitement.

It was the ultimate combination of struggle, terror and ecstasy.

Whenever I find myself struggling to learn something new, I call this image of my niece to mind.

I try to channel her spirit into my body, along with all its attendant emotions.

It’s in this state, that each of us overcame our first major challenge in life.

And it’s this state, that you’re best suited to overcome any future challenge, and have a hell of a time doing it.