Can we learn from newborns?

Photo by Joshua Reddekopp on Unsplash

The other day I was with a friend and her newborn baby. As the adoring Mum held her little bundle up she said, “she can’t really see you, you know that?”  It’s true babies are not born with perfect vision, and in fact they see blurry images for quite some time.

I learned that the farthest a baby is able to see is the distance of about 8 to 10 inches. And they can only begin to see like you and me on their 1st birthday, when their little eyes look bemusedly at the candle on their cake!   

Notwithstanding those seismic leaps, we never take for granted that this baby will eventually see.  It is only a matter of time. 

Miracles we take for granted

But this little miracle of our eyesight - like many other little miracles about us - is taken for granted. We adults have already achieved that rite of passage. It takes a new Mum to draw our attention to just how fantastic the whole process is. Images, definition, focus, colour, depth, movement, eye coordination, will all develop in each baby with a few exceptions. Nutrition, water - plus the up close faces of doting parents - is all that is required. 

The magic happens on the inside, all unseen by us. 

The first year of every baby’s life is a space of becoming, developing the gift of sight. During that time a baby has no sense of expectation – it’s all a grand exploration of objects and colours, a new world to discover. No room for frustration at lost dreams or promises – it’s bonus territory. 

Blurry and unfocused 

This got me thinking about us.  Grownups. 

We are in our second year of Covid 19.  For some, the feeling is we have lost two whole years of our lives. This is more evident if you are a teenager and your 16th birthday is fast blending into your 18th, or having been 21, you are now 22, with no real significance in either age or year for that matter.

Or if you are hoping to meet Mr Right which frankly is proving impossible, as all interaction is just  online.  

Warm coffees hurriedly gulped in the wind or rain just doesn’t cut it. 

Our experience is much like that of a new born – blurry and unfocused.  An emergence into a reality of sorts, without depth, perspective, technicolour or expectation. 

But unlike a new born we have been in this world before and for longer. We did see. But somehow that vision is not enough for now.  Our goalposts have shifted and we are not sure what or where we are right now. We are embracing or grasping our daily routines buoyed up by  the closeness of those we love.

Something more.. 

But is that it? 

Is there more to this than meets the eye?

Like the newborn, is there a miracle of growth taking place on the inside, unnoticed and unacknowledged?

Inside each of us there is a yearning for more, an inner compass which points us in the direction of something beyond us. Isn’t that yearning for more something we need to strive to stoke, feed and keep alive – much like a baby’s nutrition feeds the development of its sight?

Do we need to keep alive that hope, with the conviction that we are in fact called for more, made for more. The old ways of seeing won’t work for this new space we are in. We need another perspective, another way of looking.

But at this point we are like the bees in a hive, busily (at times) doing our bit to build community, family, friendships. We cannot see the giant masterpiece we are creating, not to mention the little works of art – all priceless before us. There is no self-satisfaction in this humdrum and routine existence. But maybe all our energy is in fact building something more. 

Seeing more, seeing differently 

At the end of this time, perhaps the Birthday cake with candles that emerges before us may be the ability to see differently.  Perspectives and depths of meaning  that we had not noticed or given importance to before, may unlock and unravel for us. This vision may help us to take risks  that previously daunted us, or pick ourselves up, reject the negative self-talk that so often gets us down, challenge ourselves to be the person I can be, and in fact the person I am called to be. To become the person who says sorry because I really know how to  love, and I now care more deeply and sincerely. 

Roll on May 4 when we hope to be able to go to our places of worship, to fill ourselves up with the life of God  REALLY  present  in the sacraments. 

In the arms of one who loves us

And this God who sees us always is like that Dad who watches us taking on all kinds of risks as children of his.  But since he knows our every move, and enjoys all those  moves, he is there to catch us every time,  if only we let him in. 

The life of God within, is what helps us penetrate and comprehend reality around us much better, but it also helps us to transcend and move beyond it too. That life grows as we feed it. But we need to stay in God’s arms, like a new-born babe if we are to see things as we were made to. There we can reach out to Him in our blindness and need, as we focus on the world beyond. We will emerge and we will see life with all its depth and beauty – not as something fluid, but as something familiar, but new at the same time.  Not as we imagine, but as it really is. 

Maybe like a newborn child, our frustrations will be replaced with joy and expectation in the experience of a life we haven’t really embraced before. 

After all heaven is for children, who know how to be such, needy but adored and always exploring.