We are learning how to button buttons in our household. Granddaughter Patti’s Hello-Kitty pajamas have buttons, so this skill is now relevant. Plus, we want to surprise her momma once Patti learns how. We’re pairing the unveiling of “button-mastery” with Patti’s first public recitation of the Golden Rule (sssh, don’t tell!). We’re getting pretty close on both.
Actually, I do know how to button buttons . . . or thought I did until I began trying to explain the process to a two-and-a-half year old. How does one button a button? At first glance, the button seems most important. But, as it turns out, the buttonhole holds the key. Finding, opening, stabilizing the buttonhole before pushing in the button makes the process work. A button without a point of focus (buttonhole) accomplishes nothing.
As a person easily distracted, I need to take a lesson from Patti’s ability to focus on the buttonhole. When a child sets out to learn something, there is an almost violent focus on the task. It doesn’t matter whether the child has the developmental skills to do it yet. The ultra-focus mode is switched on. The floors could shake, the walls rattle, but the child will not notice.
Do I have Patti’s level of focus in my daily tasks? No, I don’t. Do I even remember how to focus as she does when I have to struggle with life’s buttonholes? Well, yes, but only when I’m desperate to meet a deadline.
Perhaps for a little child, everything is a deadline—a line that must be crossed quickly to survive the challenges of life. Despite our notions of how cute little children are, it’s surely difficult to be a baby or toddler. Everything looms threateningly or is beyond your reach. You can do almost nothing to gain what you want or need. I doubt it feels very cute. Maybe this is the origin of our ability to focus: hunger, thirst, and the fear of helplessness, which children realize in their cribs. The focus of a child admits no outside factors. It doesn’t analyze itself along the way, but plunges headlong in pursuit of the goal.
Watching Patti focus has led me to think not only about my focus in daily work, but about my spiritual focus. For me, spiritual focus is the hardest thing to achieve in life. Is it for you as well? To help us, we find various buttonholes along the way: we join a prayer group, go on a retreat. We undertake rigorous programs of individual spiritual renewal (Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises comes to mind). We try to build on waves of revelation that sweep over us during a particular sermon that addresses our concerns. We gaze at a stunning sunset for the clarity that accompanies such beauty.
At these times we have our fingers on the buttonhole and the button. All we need to do is guide in the button. But as Patti’s grimace shows, it’s not as easy as it seems.
Life demands that we mature spiritually amidst the chaos of our busy lives. Truly there is a long list of buttonholes to identify and stabilize in order to accommodate the solutions we grasp. May the lessons in a child’s determination help us on this journey. And may Patti’s little fingers develop the grace and strength to push her challenges through the buttonholes of her life.
