Purpose and poo

Babies are the masters of now

Staring through tiny, blue-tinted eyes that could barely work, my newborn daughter who was laying skin-skin on my wife’s chest, gazed up at me for the first time. In the space of 7 hours, she had gone from being snuggly and comfy in the womb… to squeezed and pushed out into cool air of a hospital birthing suite. I’d cry too!

Now tucked warmly under a blanket, being cuddled by her beautiful mum, her tiny face peeking up at me, I shed tears of joy and felt a burst of love like no other.

My wife and her went through immeasurable effort for that to happen, childbirth is truly remarkable. (I tried to make this sentence more emotive and descriptive, unfortunately, my maleness could not do it justice, so I’m leaving it short and to the point).

What a moment, what an amazing sequence of miracles. A new life formed over 9 months of miracles, all leading to my daughter being born to live in the world. At that moment I had many things going through my mind. “Wow she is toooo cute”, “What name will we give her?”, “What school should she go to?”. Woah hold up… back to the present moment “wow she is just toooo cute”. I just wanted to stay in this moment, yet, like all moments, it passed. Then it was about the next moment.

If anyone has being in the present in each moment perfected, it’s newborns. All they do is respond to the sequence of eat, sleep, poo… repeat.

Or more like:

Eat, sleep, poo, sleep, eat, poo, eat, poo, eat, sleep, poo, poo, sleep, eat, poo, poo on dad while he’s still changing my nappy.

There are many things we can learn from babies, especially patience and understanding some things in life just take the time they take. Such as settling a baby, which can take anything from 2 seconds to 2 hours (or more!). It runs much deeper though.

A newborn’s entire reality cycles around responding to whatever arises for them in each moment. A continuous cycle of ‘what do I need now’ (to survive and grow). No concern for purpose, no concern for meaning; they just be.

That’s not to say babies don’t have a purpose or inherent meaning. If nothing else, their purpose is to disrupt mum’s and dad’s sleep!

Babies progress life and the universe closer to wherever it is going and remind adults that we don’t need to be concerned about finding our greater purpose to do that either. They just be, and at the same time give adults the feeling of immeasurable joy and unconditional love. To me, they are a window to enlightenment.

Truly enjoying life with a newborn means letting go of everything else, adjusting your time zone and schedule to ‘baby standard time’ (whatever that is…), and just being. I’m not suggesting ditching the mediation mat to produce a long line of babies, but the ability of a newborn baby to help bring adults into the moment and help us to just be is in itself something of a miracle.