Introduction
This reflection describes a sudden, surprising, and overwhelming experience of non-directed love.
Reflection
I am sitting on a tram near the Mexican border. It is hot. Opposite me, a young girl sits close to her corpulent mother. She pushes herself under her mother’s fat arms and smiles at me. It is a nervous but becoming smile. The mother nods and turns to stroke the girl’s forehead. Suddenly, I realise motherhood. I see that everyone has a mother, that having a mother is a peculiar bond, that it is naturally loving, protective, that something flows between mother and child, and so something flows between all individuals, there is something which is not constrained by our natural isolation and I see that love is what flows, and the child’s smile and the mother’s caress flow to me and I am their child, the child of the child and the child of the mother and I realise the harmony of it all, the perfect nature of it all, and I am filled with it and I look around for others to love, and I look back again and it is still happening, and I can hardly bear it, it is too much, too much for the individual, too much to contain within isolation. It is all to do with how we fit together, how we belong to each other in all relative ways, and I see the child’s face again, and again she smiles, and it fixes in my mind, and I feel myself changing. My stomach fills with nerves because I know I cannot explain what is going on. I try to distill it, put it into order, and I realise that it will not be rationalised, it is too much, I will only be able to retain part of it, an image maybe, a shape, a smile, a caress, something to remind me, to stimulate my memory, and I relax a bit, allow it to go, I have an insight, it is inside me, and I am changed, and the mother gets up, stretches out her hand. I shake her hand, rather embarrassed, and the young girl bows low. They both leave and I shiver with excitement. The world has opened up something new. I have seen that some of the shadow images are not self-animating puppets but are being operated. There is a force within the world which can be seen, it is available, it is not ‘beyond’ so much, as there to be seen if we see, look, perceive. I stare through the tram window. I know I will never be the same again. I have had a revelation.
Comments
This reflection captures the moment of revelation which can come out of the blue when we find ourselves inescapably close to another.
