What We Can Learn From a Newborn

I just spent the past week learning from a newborn. It has been a while. This was not my child, but my grandchild. His older toddler brother was not happy with the noisy, demanding intruder.

Trying to be as helpful as possible, I cooked, cleaned, folded laundry, and held the new baby, trying to calm him down and rock him to sleep. Because it has been a while, I had forgotten the sheer exhaustion, stress and physical demands that my son and daughter-in-law were managing. For so many young parents, there is no extended family nearby or a “village” to help and support. We had to travel for nearly two days to visit.

One of my mentors told me that many people report that they learn more from their grandchildren than from their children. I wonder if part of it is having decades of lived experience and wisdom to draw on and no longer having the constant fog and exhaustion of active parenting.

When my children were young, I didn’t have time for meditation. It was all I could do to get through the day, see my patients, get the kids to school and their various activities, make dinner, help with homework, and get them to bed. But holding the new baby, I felt I entered another world. Putting my hectic professional life aside, I slowed way down, and paused, as the meditation teachers tell us to do, listening to the newborn’s breath, his heartbeat. Just being present, peaceful, still.

We arrived right before a blizzard, so for the first few days we were surrounded by a world of quiet and stillness. I thought of a magical poem by Charles Simic:

There is Nothing Quieter,

Than softly falling snow

Fussing over every flake

And making sure

It won’t wake someone.

As I was sitting with the baby, I thought of the meditation instructions from one of my colleagues, Zeenat Potia, at Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. “Try to see the world freshly, with the eyes of a newborn.” What was this tiny being experiencing? What was he seeing? What was the world like from his perspective?

As I slowed down to be with this little baby, meeting him as best I could, I remembered the words of my wonderful yoga teacher, Tias Little. “What is it like not to go faster than the rhythm of your breath, faster than your gut, to move at the pace of trees, snails, and salamanders.” Helping my family began to feel, at some moments, like a meditation retreat.

As a well-trained researcher, I began wondering what this baby was seeing, and what was happening when he was sleeping. It is said believed that babies don’t dream until they are four months old, as there is no sense of self—an interesting dovetailing with Buddhist psychology.

I noticed that my perception began to change as I slowed way, way down, I thought of the research of psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, who writes that when we can expand our view, often by asking what else is present when we are upset or angry. Our peripheral vision actually increases and we can see more.

I have turned my experience into a simple meditation that you can try, whether or not you have a newborn to inspire you.

Quieter

• Notice your posture. Sitting, standing, walking or lying down. Pause.
• Bring in love and care for the body. Include yours and maybe the body of another.
• Open to the moment, to the five senses—hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting.
• Bring attention to the thinking/feeling mind.
• What are you feeling? Experiencing?
• If you are angry or upset, see if you can expand your view. What else is there?
• All thoughts, feelings, sensations are arising and passing away.
• If you notice any pain or hurt, try saying, “Not me, not mine.”
• What would it be like to see this for the first time? To not have a conditioned response? To ask, as the Zen masters do in their koans, “What is this?”
• Whatever you are wrestling with, you can find ease, compassion and tenderness for your experience. Let yourself be supported and comforted by kindness.
• When you are ready, let it go and return to the present moment, bringing the kindness and compassion through your day.

On my way back home, I kept thinking of Marie Howe’s wise poem "Hurry":

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store

and the gas station and the green market and

Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,

as she runs along two or three steps behind me

her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?

To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?

Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,

Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—

you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking

back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,

hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

What a gift it can be to slow down.