A little over two weeks ago, I watched my daughter emerge into life. She took her first breaths, belted her first cry, squirmed her little legs and arms in air for the first time, and then, for a few hours, my wife and I took turns holding her against our skin. I've seen newborns before, and I've seen births (albeit of sheep), and what I didn't know or anticipate was how totally wide awake and present our baby would be for those first minutes and hours of life. They say newborns sleep a lot, and that's true, but not at first, not at the very beginning.
From what I understand, newborns can't really see much, even when those eyes are big and wide and open. I think what must be getting in then, what was blowing her new little mind in those first hours, was, to a large extent, light. Light, transforming existence for her from the womb to the world. Suddenly, with the space to be, with the vastness of air around her rather than the safe, enveloping darkness of the womb, she was experiencing the most profound transformation possible.
Space and light
I’ve been taking a break from the news for my first few weeks of parenthood. In my time away, it’s hit me that what I often feel most acutely when enmeshed in the details of the contemporary ascendance of malign power is suffocation. They—Trump, the administration, the rising authoritarians all over the world—try to fill all the space, every nook and crevice, with their dire and terrifying version of reality. They attempt to destroy not just parts of society that offer alternatives, but the very notion that alternatives exist. They “flood the zone,” they operate a never ending noise machine, and they keep people so bottled up in activated outrage that we ultimately become exhausted and, believing it to be for the sake of our sanity, we give in.
No space, no light—beyond the propaganda of “energy” and “change,” what we really get is quicksand, the suffocating stagnancy of dread and despair.
So how do we get some space and light?
Chapter 11 of the Tao holds an essential understanding about the meaning of space that I think helps us learn one of the secrets—
Thirty spokes join one hub. The wheel's use comes from emptiness. Clay is fired to make a pot. The pot's use comes from emptiness. Windows and doors are cut to make a room. The room's use comes from emptiness. Therefore, Having leads to profit, Not having leads to use.
Try to hold in mind all that is not part of the unending stream of poisonous noise—begin with observing the space around you, between your knee, say, and the next closest object in the room, let’s say the ottoman by the couch. All that space! Now expand that notion of space to the rest of the room you’re in, then the building, then outside the building, then the sky, rising up into the atmosphere, out into the cosmos, throughout the universe.
When you think to look for it, the amount of space available to contemplate is far, far greater than the space taken up by those who try to suffocate you with anything and everything they “flood” into the “zone.” Indeed, their efforts look nothing short of childish.
The first lines of Bereishit/Genesis help us understand how to then let the light in: simply say the words, let there be—
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ When Oneness began to create heaven and earth— וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃ the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from Oneness sweeping over the water— וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר׃ Oneness said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
And then? Well, I think my daughter has the insight here—open your eyes anew, allow the world to be wondrous, begin it all refreshed, returned from whatever your latest disintegration.
In her poem Da Capo, Jane Hirshfield writes—
You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.
Living in the layers
A final thought for this post: this alchemy of space and light creating transformation and how it hits the hard ground of our reality feels so well captured in Stanley Kunitz's poem "The Layers," which I heard for the first time on local radio when I lived on a farm in Willits, CA, and which I've since read so many times that I’ve memorized. It’s on my mind not only related to this post, but as I witness my daughter’s daily transformation and undergo my own transformation into parenthood.
I’ll copy/paste the entirety of the poem below and let you read it and enfold it into your life in the way that makes sense for you. An important fact about its creation is that Kunitz wrote and published it in his late 70s (he lived to 104).
All of which is to say, it’s truly never too late.
The Layers by Stanley Kunitz I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road precious to me. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes.
I was going to say that this must be read by everyone over 70 but then I realized that it should be read by everyone. We all start off each day with a new beginning built upon what has come before. This states it beautifully
Beautiful and soul sustaining. And mazel tov on the birth of your daughter!!