Learning
New Tricks
“In
any case, whether we feel that we weren’t nurtured properly, or whether we feel
fortunate that we were…in the present moment we can always realize that the
ground is to develop loving-kindness toward ourselves.”
(Pema
Chodron (The Wisdom of No Escape, p.65; Shambala Publications, 1991)
One day
last week, I stood in line at the County Revenue Office to renew a car tag. We
were socially distanced, and the young woman in front of me pushed a stroller
with a baby girl in it. The baby looked to be about six or seven months old, was
wearing a onesie romper and a little headband with a flower on it. As they
stood there she stared intently at her mother’s face and mouthed sounds, obviously
trying to talk to her. The mother, as is so often the case now, was engrossed
in her cell phone. The baby cooed and kicked her legs and did everything a
little one can do to get mama’s attention except to cry. After a while she gave
up on mom, and just looked around and played with her toes.
Now,
was this a case of “not enough nurturing” or was it a good lesson in
self-reliance at the infant level. I can’t say for sure, but this I know:
someone, somewhere, took care of that baby—even though she was being ignored in
the moment, she was not frightened, angry, or sad. She was content to entertain
herself. To me, that is a strength. And the mother knew that her baby was
comfortable, clean, and dry, so she could turn her attention elsewhere. That too
is nurturing. In this age of helicopter parenting, I think the young woman had
it right. Teach a child self-reliance and she will grow up confident in her own
capacity to represent herself.
Those
of us who were not well-nurtured as infants, regardless of the reason, are
sensitive to misuse, mishandling, and neglect. We may still, even in our
sixties and seventies, feel the effects of that lack, so we remain
hypervigilant. But hypervigilance and anxiety do not create good parents—only nervous,
hovering parents. And, as much as we see ourselves as “involved, hands-on,
parents,” what we may be is hovering, suffocating parents. We are serving the
needs of our children when we teach them to be confident in themselves, to take
care of themselves, because we may not be around to take care of them.
Things
are not always what they seem. Sometimes, our first impressions are wrong because
they are based on our own experiences and biases. When we project our value judgements
upon others, we miss the fact that their history may be different from ours and
they may operate from a different moral code. They may even know more that we
do when it comes to child-rearing, and…well, many other things.
We are never too old to
learn something new—at least, I hope we aren’t. We can begin to learn, even in
old age, how to nurture ourselves, and how to forgive those who didn’t do it
well enough. All it takes is loving kindness in our hearts.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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