My children.
My children show me how I want to live.
More importantly, my children show me how I want to love.
Let me try to explain.
Lately I look at Rain and I observe & feel his unique design. The piece of art that he is — the way every part of him from inner to outer will never be duplicated or exist again in exactly the same way. I watch the energy of life moving through him — where there is flow and where there is fear, or block. All of it, beautiful. All of it, his unique blueprint. The set of conditions he was born with and into. Conditions we all have in a very specific, special way — a unique map of life flow.
I experienced his design with a very potent awareness this early morning.
He took me away from breakfast and lunch prep to show me how the dump truck works. He sat himself down with the giant toy in his hands. The explanation was so detailed, as he paused frequently to make sure it was accurate and that he understood what he was saying just as much as I understood what he was saying. The way his hands moved across the toy truck - the recycled trash we made together last night, a torn-up cardboard box, spilling from the little dump - the trash shic-shacking in its basin, and the fork-lift that lifts it into the truck clickkkking when pushed beyond its plastic threshold. He held it all as if it were this delicate and pristine thing. An artifact, a treasure. I watched his mouth fill and spill with words as his eyes danced left and right tracing the mechanism like some miraculous invention.
He teaches me how i want to live. Totally, and unconditionally, in it———in life.
And I witness all this - and at the same time, I also witnessed a part of myself wanting to cut him off. Wanting to rush him through this long drawn out explanation and fascination because time is ticking and I have motherly things to do. I have to make sure you kids eat and get ready for school and get cleaned up for a nap on time (on time! On time! On time!) Oh! The clock. The conditions of life it forces upon us and out of us. It’s so necessary to experience and move with time’s tick. And in the same vein, we must also know when to remind time itself that both it and we really belong to eternity.
In a moment like this, watching Rain navigate himself with this truck in his hands, I can sense he is tasting eternity. He’s experiencing himself unconditionally and totally, in this moment. Him showing me, his mother, this garbage truck, is the most important thing. Mostly i see him in joy. He is fully enjoying himself and everything about this moment unfolding. As he unfolds, the moment unfolds — all vibrating like music to his humanity. He is the conductor.
I let that conditional tick-tock-tick-tock part of me rest for a moment. I acknowledge her. I need her to keep life moving. She wants the best for all of us, I know… I take what i need from her and leave what i don’t. I coax her into stillness. I let her spectate this eternity around my son. I go back to witnessing this magnificent creature that is Rain. Rain, with all his excitements and obsessions and frustrations — he is human, just like all of us. And he is unique, just like each one of us. He is the one and only Rain, and I am his mother - and I am here to witness him alive - his unique creation + blossoming alive. And I am here to do that unconditionally for all my relationships and also for myself - the source of it all.
And this is love’s ideal. This is how my children remind me how i want to love, and how i want to live.
And no doubt, alive in a world of conditions, this is a challenging practice especially. To be in wonder and awe of life - floating in that unconditional space which is timeless and full of joy - watching our conditions rather than reacting to them…
Ultimately, I know i am also meant to experience my humanity - my unique design and conditions, what makes me me. I am meant to get drawn back into conditions and time and frustration. Each time, whirling up and down, up and down like a rising spiral into the heavens. Each rise towards the unconditional brings me higher.
To be conditional and unconditional are both necessary. Both perceptions of life are necessary - it is how life keeps progressing while coming back to the one expansive truth that the only thing that will never end is unconditional love. It’s what we are, what we came from and what we go back to. Unconditional love is the blank page on which all the art and creations of the world are rooted. All that art all these people that we are and all this stuff - it’s all a bunch of conditions. And our judgements around them are also conditions. Conditions are absolutely necessary to a world of form and material - otherwise there would be no beginning and no end to this table that I’m writing on, this iPad that I’m typing into. It’s all a set of conditions.
But the kids —
They are so fresh from their unconditional love, that they still float there. And every day if I am awake enough, they remind me, again, how to to float.
And now I am realizing that I can, if I want to, unconditionally love my conditions. Just let it all be. Just enter that dimension of joy and in-joy, everything. Every condition, just as it is. Love it, like a flower. Its own creative thing. And when the siren of time calls me back into my form, my design - pushing me onwards through my conditions, it blossoms me as i unfold, and as I unfold the moment unfolds — all vibrating like music to my humanity—
And I am the conductor.