I have made some big, beautiful mistakes in this first year of parenting, all of which can be traced back to arrogance. If you were to ask around, very few people would tell you that they’re arrogant. Everybody thinks of themselves as a balanced and reasonable individual. Some might admit to being "opinionated." But almost everyone secretly believes themselves better, or at least more correct than others.
This certainly applies, maybe particularly so, to those of us who attempt to cultivate Beginner's Mind. What could be more radical? What could mark us more clearly as Special, as Wise, as embodying an Alternative to the closed minds all around?
Am I right in all this generalizing about "people" and "those of us"? Or do I only describe my conceited little self? Maybe so.
When the Little Warrior was born, I didn’t think of myself as having any particular social agenda, and I wasn’t feeling particularly rebellious. Like every new parent, I wanted to do a good job. The little bit of individual character I brought to that was, I wasn’t willing to accept received wisdom without question. This wasn’t a conscious decision to be subversive or buck a trend, but more of an implicit assumption that the many conventions of childrearing might be devoid of any inherent value.
A new baby can’t even go home from the hospital without a car seat, the first piece of gear, and in our auto-obsessed society, possibly the foremost one as well. When she gets home, she is typically greeted by a world of specialized furniture: crib, high chair, and bouncy recliner, at a minimum.
Determined not to make the same assumptions as the majority, I made my own very personal ones instead. Since I saw no reason to blindly follow where others led, I would do things differently. Why should my baby need a crib? He can sleep in the bed with us. It seemed cozy; in keeping with my husband’s Chinese heritage; and just edgily politically-correct enough to be gratifying yet unthreatening. I liked everything I read about co-sleeping, so I decided ahead of time we would do it. Little did I suspect the mercilessly efficient lesson that lay in store.
You could say that sleeping with my baby--or trying to--taught me a wee lesson about the value of convention. It's there for a reason, and so forth. But--beyond being wrong-wrong-wrong about what was going to work out for us--there is another lesson: something about being tied to unconventionality for its own sake; something about the avoidance of Fixed View becoming its own Fixed View.
On the mundane level, then: cribs exist for a reason! Maybe some babies sleep fine with their parents, and maybe some parents sleep fine with their babies. We did not. After my son was six months old, he spent the entire night kicking, rotating his body around, flailing, pressing his feet into my husband’s face, and grappling for the nipple. Things deteriorated until the baby failed to sleep more than 90 minutes at a stretch. I would wake up to find myself ravished by a passionately-sucking son. Any attempt to separate him from the from nipple was met with loud protests. If I tried to sleep apart from him, the little guy would come find me and have his way with me while I slept.
I was torn, and I was also really, really sleep deprived. I did all the research I could, talked to other moms, read books, and tried to reason my way through it. The situation could not continue. But what to do?
Finally, after reading Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, I did two things I thought I’d never do: we put the baby in a crib, and we let him cry it out. I had visions beforehand of extreme suffering, because my son is the most stubborn person I know. But two nights later, he was sleeping 8-9 hours at a stretch, and I was too! Months later, this highly gratifying behavior continues.
Why, oh why, didn't I use a crib sooner?
The answer is that I was unable to see clearly because I was opinionated. Or you could call it arrogant. I put principles above reality. I made my mind up before I had a chance to be curious about some of the possible very good reasons for crib use.
I suspect that Master Dogen had something else in mind when he described his life as "one continuous mistake," but maybe he didn't. Maybe he meant this experience of having your own shortcomings constantly reflected back to you by a dispassionate Reality that cares nothing for reasons or ideas. The more we hold to those notions, the more suffering is sown, by our own hand.
How fortunate that the Little Warrior stepped in to disillusion me. Better to be reminded by the little things that don't go as planned; better to practice now with relinquishing the grand agenda for My Perfect Life. The big stuff will come in time, as it must.
It's easy to quote the Dharma, and talk about opening to What Is. The reality is much stickier: I am slow, reluctant, and apt to reversal when it comes to actually cultivating that quality. Trying to talk it one thing: manifesting a practice in one's bones is another. I never thought parenting would be this way!-- this wonderful, this exhausting, this brimming with love, this demanding of my every internal resource.
If I were less fettered, my gratitude would not be so rueful as it is.
