Not too long ago on a beautiful spring day I came home from work, and I found two of my daughters playing in the front yard. One of them didn’t look too [very] happy. I invited her to sit down with me on the front step. I asked her what was wrong. Oh, and she launched into a tirade as only a five-year-old can about how everything is so unfair and so hard, especially at kindergarten.

Oh, it was bad! The teacher had criticized her work, she couldn’t sit with her favorite friend, her sister wouldn’t play with her, her brother wouldn’t wrestle with her, and on and on she went. She was having a bad day, and there was nothing I was going to say that was going to change that.

Well, I got an idea. Since I couldn’t reason with her to help her feel better, maybe I could distract her.

“Look, Honey,” I said, pointing to the sun that was just going down. “The sun’s going behind the tree. Ah, now I won’t get to see it anymore; I won’t get to feel its warmth anymore. That is so unfair!”

Well, she looked at me kind of weird and said, “No, it’s not!”

“Yes, it is,” I argued. “Now I’ll never get to see it again!”

“Yes, you will.”

“No, I won’t.”

We argued back and forth, me [my] pointing out the unfairness of the sun going down, and her promising its return.

Finally, with great earnestness and some exasperation, she blurted out, “It’s okay, Dad! The sun will come out again!”

I stopped, and I looked at her expectantly for a moment. But she didn’t get it. Maybe she never will. No, she will – someday.

We went out for ice cream.