The Mommy Brain Blog

I came across a beautiful quote attributed to Albert Einstein in a story about neuroscientists and the Dalai Lama in a recent edition of the Psychotherapy Networker.
It goes like this: "A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

"This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security."

Being a stereotypical northern Californian upper-middle-class Boomer, I practice compassion in my yoga class. But I also practice it, day after day, with my children. Sometimes I succeed though more often I fail. But I do trust that practice is making me steadily more aware and maybe even better in the long run. The special potency of parental love helps give many of us the motive we might otherwise lack to try to comprehend the workings other kinds of brains -- the kinds of brains, for instance, that think it's perfectly alright to wake you up to bug you about what you'll be doing for their birthdays when their birthdays are six months away. The kind of brains that need more constant reassurance and stimulation and contact than your own, perhaps. Wouldn't it be great if parents could start to see this daily tending of our insular families as a step toward connection with the wider world?