All adults were cute little babies
Home Affairs: Ghosting my therapist, a workshop in my home, training the heart, the aftertaste, fillers, recurrent dreams, the inevitable, and a note on waiting.
All adults were babies. Right there, lies a fact hard to wrap my head around. I’ll recognize it’s hard because sometimes I just don’t want to accept it. When I spot a man at the gym staring at his muscles, twisting his arm to invoke that tricep line, it’s awfully challenging to go, Oh, that man was a tiny helpless baby once. Or take this vicious woman who doesn’t even look at you when you stand up to move your son’s high chair so she can sit down -while also cutting the line-. I don’t feel like tapping into the compassion that will inevitably flourish in me after I imagine her as an infant, drooling all over her mother.
And here is where things get interesting. Somehow we’ve managed to unanimously agree on something: the passing of time erases our given lovableness. There’s no way I’m going to be rude to an eight-month-old baby who’s hitting my son. I’d find that cute. But were that human, say, four years old, I would, at least, ask where their parents are with a defensive glare in my eyes. Were the same human hitting my son seven years old, I would full-on threaten him. Twelve? Fifteen? Consider that child’s life over. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.) (Kind of.)
Newness -as humans- grants us immediate compassion. Growing up is fine, but it’s also impossible. Something, a heavy blanket, is placed over our shoulders: responsibility. An obligation to respond to our actions.
All of this is what I thought yesterday morning after I cursed someone in silence for acting like a complete asshole. I thought about all of this and I laughed, alone, in silence, well, not quite, but not too loud.
Speaking of compassion, occasionally, my marriage feels like a workshop I didn’t sign up for. How to be compassionate toward the man you married, Understanding your husband is a human being with feelings of his own, and Managing anger when all you want to do is snap at your spouse for being insufferable. Those would be great titles for the workshop I feel is my marriage -sometimes. Surprisingly, here are two solid reasons to be grateful for the workshop: