The Greatest Weakness

One night I sat on the edge of Henry's bed and stroked his hair while he cried. "Mommy, I don't want to go to college."

He's six.

"I'm scared.”

Something you should know: I am not great at coming up with the kind of reductive explanations young children generally require. I should have said something like, "Henry, college will be great! You'll see. Don't worry about that now." Yes, that would've been adequate--I see that now.  In the moment, I feel the need to explain all the mysteries of the universe, which of course I don't even understand myself. I make things way too complicated.

"Just...just be six, Henry. Just be here, in your bed, in your room, in this house, on the farm, in the dark.  Nothing else is real."

"What?" he barked.

Henry doesn't like me to make abstract statements like this.  They annoy him, the way your sixth grade math teacher would be annoyed to find poems scrawled on your bar graph ditto.  Henry may see the world in bar graphs, I'm not sure. 

The greatest weakness of both the past and the future lies precisely in their lack of reality....Where did I read that? I wanted to tell him in a way that would make sense, but I couldn't make sense of it myself there in the dark. I wanted to tell him about the lilies of the field, and the sparrow's fall, something wise and calming and motherly. But I foundered. His hair ran soft along my palm. We sat like that for a minute, listening to each other breathing.

"The future isn't real. You don't know what college will be like. Your six-year-old brain can only imagine what it's like, and you are scared of what you imagine. But that's not real. Don't waste your time in a place that isn't real." My little voice said: Why don't you heed your own advice?  

Shut up, you, I thought.

I spend my time in the future, too, because I imagine it will be better than the present. I wait for things to "level off." For the kids to get older, for Eric to be less stressed at work, for us to have more time, fewer bills, more money. But it isn't real. Those times will never come, because they consist not primarily of concrete realities, but of a change in my perception, and you can't passively wait for a change of perception. The kids getting older will not change my perception of how busy I am or how much they require of me. Having fewer bills or more money will not change my relationship to money and savings, which as you probably know tends to remain the same no matter your income level.

I lay this veil of my imagined future over the present. I expect that the kids will become more independent, and so I begin to resent that they are not yet so. I expect that Eric will be less stressed one day, and so I begin to resent that he is not yet so. And my relationships to them become obscure, and vexed by both my memories and my expectations.

If I can lay that aside, and see the present as it is with no amendments, no caveats, then something miraculous happens. Then I can love with a pure love. Then I can appreciate the myriad blessings in my life, because they flow into the present without the baggage of unfulfillable promises.

To say what things are you have to see what things are, and seeing is hard. I'm lucky if I can do it five minutes a day. To see the miracle that is all around you, without the dark glass of my doubts and fears and needs and wants. It's really hard.  Try it.