Sweet and Tender Baby Mind

Getting to know a baby is like getting to know some fundamental and universal aspect of the Self, the foundation that a human is built upon. As we grow, successive layers of personality are superimposed upon the Babyself. That first consciousness remains recognizable to us though--that's why people find babies interesting. In them, we recognize something buried, but still present in our own psychic makeup.

The two most striking things about babies--or this baby at any rate, and I don't imagine he's so unique in this--is the sweetness, and the vulnerability they embody.

All the arguments about humans being fundamentally open-hearted now make sense and are no longer theoretical. This baby is easily swayed to joy, eager to relate, eager to love and be loved. He is spontaneously sweet, and without guile.

And he is vulnerable. He displays some understanding of his own complete neediness. He does not mind if he gets dirty, and he doesn't mind physical discomfort as much as I would expect. You can drip saline drops in his nose, or let milk crust form in his armpits, and he hardly complains at all. (How milk crust gets into a baby's armpits in the first place has me stumped, but that doesn't concern him either.) But take his mama away and give him a bottle, and he is not happy. Fail to feed him when he cries in the middle of the night, and he becomes indignant. Even when there is no blood-sugar emergency, when the boy is tired he clings to my chest and looks into my face with large eyes as if he were asking for something or regarding some great wonder.

This baby mind is precious. To turn it to nastiness would require pain coupled with insult--plus a processing ability he does not yet have. In my own experience, I have been very uncomfortable when my own infantile vulnerablity arises. You could argue that it's hardly relevant in an able-bodied person for whom food and shelter are normally in steady supply. But it persists; perhaps its arising is a sign of some mild pathology, but nevertheless it is as much a part of the human psyche as the delight that comes from watching light and shapes, or the innate satisfaction of sharing a smile and laughter with another person.

From our earliest weeks of life, we are helpless, and we are joyful. It's a privilege to care for someone who is wholly in that phase of life.