More thoughts provoked by hanging out with a baby…

Willy wore himself out yesterday trying to get up on all fours, and trying to get to the toys I'd placed so provocatively near, and trying to sit up.

When I laid him down on his back on the play pad he'd hold his head and shoulders off the floor, trying to get back up. You know how hard that is? Like the first part of a sit-up? Wow. What a lot of work it is to grow up!

It made me think about how dissatisfaction fuels human development. If we weren't dissatisfied with lying around, we'd never start rolling over. If we weren't bored with rolling over, we'd never get up on all fours. If we didn't get annoyed by having to crawl everywhere, we'd never learn how to walk.

Dis-satisfaction is a necessary precursor to satisfaction.