Parenting with the principals and practices of sufficiency have long been an interest of mine, though it all started with my head in the sand. Application was all academic to me, a good idea in theory. Most of the wisdom, I’ve come to discern, comes through a tough moment or day, in which I see some habit I have with my children that is not serving them, me or our family system.
Take yesterday. It’s Mother’s Day and I am alone with my kids and I don’t want to be. In fact, I want to be anywhere else but where I am, and I act as such. The day starts early and I get grouchy quickly. It’s the kind of day that I actually yell, “Stop yelling!” knowing I am doing so, and I don’t even laugh about it. It’s that bad. I don’t cause direct harm: in fact my gracious four year old says in response to my apology for being so crabby: “No you are not, Mom.” She just has first child syndrome, I think, because I am. I am actively resisting what is, and what is, as nature does, persists. I am resentful, blameful, angry, hateful – deep, deep in scarcity – and because I can see this and am desperate to shield it from my kids, I direct it all on myself. Not so happy mother on Mother’s Day.
It’s just this kind of suffering, I have found, that often gives me access to some new learning. The day looks like me saying to myself, I am suffering and I am causing my own suffering. I know rationally and in my heart that no one else is causing this. I can literally feel the mental loop of my aggravation and disappointment, and at moments, despair, churning and boiling over. I am in a spin cycle of blaming myself; and if blame is the discharge of pain and discomfort, I wondered, what is that for me? I am in pain, I realized, because I am not in reality or relationship with myself, or them, or anyone for that matter, including the dog or the neighbor or friends calling for well wishes. All of us are forms of life force that I am an obstacle to flowing. I can feel this, like a boulder in a river: I am causing a dam and it’s about to pop.
With my preschooler it is most evident. She is so alive, so full of words and play and movement. I can now tell the state of my mind with how well I can see her. Sometimes she is a blur of force I have to deal with. I can’t actually see her because I can only see and experience my interpretation of her. In those moments she practically doesn’t have a face, she is just an object I have to tend to, a task, a demand. Sometimes I am able to recognize this and redirect my attention, and my sight changes. Ah, I think, there she is. And her face comes into focus and her limbs and the outfit she picked out earlier and I can hear her stories, follow her movements. Her name comes back, her being. And it’s because I am present. The whole context of our interaction changes. From this place, I am relational and possibilities open up and I stop suffering.
This objectification – that I do completely unconsciously – is my default context. I literally awaken out of it when I remember to. Once I wake up I can choose to stay, but it is always shocking that I was in this other space. I’ve been left thinking a lot about perception and reality. How everything I see and think and believe is largely though many layers of foggy windows, blurred by scarcity. It takes something to not suffer, to take care (of self and other), and to enjoy a day – at least for some of us, even on a day made especially for us.