Look, Dad! I Made a Butt Print!

I’m not sure how Isaac did it, or why he did it. But he did it, and it was magnificent. He was very proud of it. I know this because when he was finished, he announced it, loud enough for everyone on the beach to hear.“Look, dad! I made a butt print!”A butt print.Have you ever made a butt print?Of course you have. You just weren’t very proud of it. But you should have been.Our culture does not celebrate butt prints. We celebrate movement, efficiency, getting things done. We celebrate footprints; lots and lots of them, all headed uphill and trailed by sweaty accomplishment. We celebrate fast and productive. We celebrate adrenaline.We don’t celebrate butt prints. But we should.Making butt prints is first and foremost about stopping. It’s about sinking down in one place, and enjoying the moment (not seizing it, though – that’s far too intense and ambitious). It’s about sinking down into your own butt print, as glorious and big and amazing as it actually is. It’s about staying there long enough to leave a mark.It’s about slowing down. It’s about being with the people you love, enjoying each other, and laughing until you snort. It's about now.Making butt prints is about summer, and this is summer, so stop with the urgency and busyness and craziness and goal setting and the next, next, next. It’s about stopping long enough to disengage from productivity. It’s about taking yourself less seriously. Way. Less. Seriously.Summer is butt printing season, so let’s get to it.Don’t you feel that? It’s right between your shoulder blades, and it’s creeping up into your neck, the ropes of tension throttling you while simultaneously pulling you towards the next urgent task, or back into a festival of worry about what you already did wrong.The ropes don’t exist when you’re making butt prints. They’re not allowed in that space.The best kind of butt print is made right next to another one. It’s about sinking down next to someone else and listening long enough to get past the protective shellac that covers who we actually are. Listening. It’s not about advice, it’s about smiles and sighs and “I know” and “I’m sorry.” It’s about silence, even. But mostly, laughter.Oh, and the importance of making butt prints is in the bible, so it’s totally legit. The writers originally called it Sabbath, and it’s the very first thing in all of the Scriptures that is called holy. So there. Making butt prints is holy.And when you’re finally finished with all the glorious making of the butt prints, you won’t get all stressy and judgy about the things you didn’t get done. Because when you stop and slow down long enough to actually make a butt print or two, you’ll receive deposits of energy to face those stressy things in a new way. That’s how butt printing works. It’s restorative.So, cancel your plans, and start making butt prints.You'll love it.