Tom ran into the room with a delighted look on his face.
“Look Mummy! Look! I made this with Daddy!” he excitedly threw a piece of creatively joined lego in my face. ‘I builded this with Daddy, look!”

I looked at Tom’s ‘Eco Helicopter’ (his description, not mine) with amusement and pride. It had been an achievement to build something so complex and so… well… unique. Tom had clearly put a lot of imagination into his construction.

He ran over to Esther and showed her, “Look little girl. Look what your big brother has done. Aren’t I clever?” Esther smiled gappily and appreciatively at him, before dribbling extensively and swiping at the helicopter with her closed fist.

“Tom!” I warned, “Take your toy away from your baby sister. She doesn’t understand what it means to you, how long it took to build or how precious it is.” Tom skipped off with his creation to put it in his bedroom, as he put it “for a hundred years…”

When was the last time you shared something precious with someone else and they tried to take a proverbial swipe at it? There is nothing harder to bear. Perhaps it was a friend that you had grown to love and you introduced them to someone and it didn’t go how you planned… maybe you shared a business proposition, or a work project idea that was cast down by others… maybe you opened something of your heart with a friend and they didn’t react the way you needed them to.

There are certainly some things and maybe even people that are precious to us, but not to others. This may not be the other person’s fault. Perhaps, like Esther, they are not mature enough to see what the true value of your discovery or creation means for you.

I have some dreams in my life that not many people would really truly ‘get’ or appreciate. I also have a slightly ‘random’ collection of people who are my friends, but who would possibly struggle to find much common ground with one another. Amongst my mates are a couple of bishops, a boy racer or two, a few beauty therapists, a professional violinist, a cupcake designer, a composer, a few entrepreneurs, prison workers, photographers, dancers, IT consultants, those in Care and those on the dole… It doesn’t bother me how old my friends are or what (if anything) they do. What bothers me is that they can begin to see what (and who) is precious to me and what is precious about me. I try and return the favour.

When people look at the Mona Lisa, they see different things in her face. No two people will describe that picture with the same language. Don’t swipe at someone’s dream today and don’t let them swipe yours.