What is YOUR spirit animal?

Not to be uncharacteristically New Age, but I've been thinking about this. See, right now we live near all these cow pastures, and I run or walk or drive by them at least once a day. I can sort of tell the cows apart now, at least some of them. Last fall, there was a calf, a really tiny one, that ran and jumped around the field like a dog. I had never seen a cow do that before, and it really fascinated me. I wanted to go over to that pasture all the time and watch him. M told me that the running calf was my spirit animal, but I hadn't before thought about what that means.

Now I'm in what you could call a Transitional Period. I'm not sure what I want to Do With My Life. In this day and age, what you "Do" usually refers to your job, or what you get paid for. From my perspective, it's a little more all-encompassing; it will be what I do for money, for volunteer work, and how I help my friends and family. And today, I suddenly realized why the running calf is my spirit animal.

That tiny calf grew up rather quickly, and as he grew, he stopped frolicking. I went back again and again to try to catch him running around, and he was always eating grass...just like all the other cows. He learned from those around him. Children can be the same way - they learn how to act based on the people in their environment. I think my vocation is to protect and foster their desire to frolic, play, sing, explore, learn, or whatever they are naturally doing to follow their instincts for as long as possible. I want to be the voice that reassures them that they don't have to eat grass, i.e. mimic grownups, just yet. They have time.

School is a place where we try to make little children act like grownups. The fluorescent lights, furniture, routines and schedules are uncannily similar between schools and large corporate offices. I am not saying that children shouldn't learn. On the contrary, I think they would learn much more about reading, writing, math, social studies, science, physical education, and music, if we didn't make them sit still for six hours a day. But do we really need to start preparing them for Initech when they're seven? Or twelve. Or sixteen, for that matter. From watching kids "play" I know they know how to learn. They just need some help from grownups to allow this to happen.

So that's the story of my spirit animal. What's yours?