Thursday, June 22, 2006

Unconditional love

It's funny that the first blog I am ever writing is about this heavy topic "unconditional love". A few masochistic friends/relatives of mine have asked me to post stuff...and today happens to be the grand opening day of my blog store!
I wrote to an old friend today about how for the first time I felt like I felt unconditional love...and hence I thought that would be my opening topic...
She wrote to me that she doesn't plan on having children and may be some biological instinct is missing in her...I can understand her not wanting to have kids - it is a personal choice...and she may adopt later and am sure she will be just as happy with it as she would having her own child.
I wrote back to her about my baby who is now 10m old and how for the first time I feel like I know or can feel unconditional love...And I feel like *this* really is unconditional love - even more than what a parent can give a child or a spouse can give his/her partner. I can let my baby cry it out for a few minutes just so he will fall asleep or just so he doesn't get hurt by some sharp object that he wants but the next instant when he is calm it is totally forgotten - no judgements, no hurt feelings lingering - he can hug or come at my face like a little bear with pure untainted affection. Ofcourse the cynic in me wants to add that this too is only for the first two or three years....once grown up - it's not unconditional....
I have always felt it is selfish to have your own baby when there are so many in need of a home. But something in us all compels us to have our own...may be the desire to see us in our child/children. In different ways we are all selfish to some extent - just the fact we are able to live in reasonable comfort while we know there are children going hungry elsehwere, while we walk past a homeless man to Starbucks to have a frappucino we can well live without...different limits for different people...people like Medha Patkar or activists like her probably give a lot more of them than most other people...but experiencing this sort of unconditional love from a child, somehow one tends to forget the selfishness in having your own...it is definitely possible to experience all of this though with an adopted child I am sure...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was a nice, touching article...sure, it is just random thoughts put together but it made for good reading...

"I can let my baby cry it out for a few minutes just so he will fall asleep or just so he doesn't get hurt by some sharp object that he wants but the next instant when he is calm it is totally forgotten - no judgements, no hurt feelings lingering - he can hug or come at my face like a little bear with pure untainted affection."

--> these lines were what really made the write-up spl. and something deeper than a simple piece of free-association. really nice words...

Ram said...

"while we walk past a homeless man to Starbucks to have a frappucino we can well live without..."


suffering from the same thoughts as u do. i hope i get an answer some day...

noon said...

BTW - I had a frappucino today at the starbucks by the beach! Was yummy, what can I say! Thankfully I didn't think about anything - just looked at the crowds and waited blankly for the walk signal and then looked at a bunch of people playing volley ball (badly!)...yet these thoughts keep haunting me/us all and we keep pushing some of them under the rug and act on some of em!

Kumpi said...

Nice selction of topic. Very thought provoking.. does unconditional love exist only between a parent and a child? can we attribute the reason to just the umbilical cord (ofcourse,it holds true even in the case of an adopted child)..then why is it mostly just one way from parent to the child? just my two cents...good write-ups nu chiths !! keep up the good work !!!

noon said...

Actually I think unconditional love is only from child to parent or anyone who assumes the role of primary caretaker say in an adopted situation (not even the other way - parent to child - in the purest sense of it) that too in the first few years of the child's life...the child really has no expectations - ofcourse food etc - the child cries in anger if he/she is not fed etc...but the love (or the expression of it) is really pure...you can look hideous, you can sound angry, you can be in a bad mood - no matter what, the way the child reacts to you is full of love...a parent can also feel all that for the child - but I think it still can have expectations and judgements...and more and more so as the child grows into an adult...which is why you do see/hear of parents disowning their kids because they did this or that...not in all cases but I am just saying those intial years the love the child shows for the parent is just so pure...

noon said...

And thanks for the complients, vids!

Siva said...

very nicely written.. I was able to experience a little bit of this 'unconditional love' with my 3 yr old niece when I left her and came to the US. And of course, I can see this feeling in my mom too. Maybe oneday I get to feel this from my kid when I have one.