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parental haiku

New York Insight Meditation Center February 11, 2014

9-day-old and 6-year-old

chess lesson with diapers and screaming

tired dad's brain melts

–Matt

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What's helping you get through the week?

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Sep 22

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What's helping you get through the week?

Although love is almost always referred to as an ...

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Sep 21

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Although love is almost always referred to as an emotion, sometimes even as the supreme emotion, I generally try these days to draw a bigger picture of love—one where it might sometimes ap- pear as conventionally emotional, and at other times, it might not appear in that way at all. Both can be powerful.

To me, for example, inclusion looks like a face of love. We might realize we haven’t been fully present with someone because of distraction, or an assumption about them as not worth much of our time, or perhaps simply because of bad habits of attention. When we become aware of not really being present or open and gather our attention to more completely see someone and hear what they’re saying, that is a gesture of love.

I see recognizing our existence as interdependent as a face of love. This isn’t the same thing as liking each other; it is a realization that our lives are inextricably interwoven. Then perhaps we take a moment to thank someone or hold them in appreciation. I remember, in the height of the pandemic in 2020, speaking to the head of a large medical practice at a hospital and hearing him say, “You know who I have a whole new appreciation for? The cleaning staff.” And I thought, Well, yes! We might be reluctant to think of that kind of appreciation as love, but a recognition of interdependence can go bone-deep and also counts as love. It counts in an important way, because it transforms our worldview.

Can we see each moment as expressive of those who have influenced us, a confluence of impressions and relationships and connections? Can we find ourselves in one another?