BACK FROM HAWAII, THOUGHTS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF LOVE AND FAMILY

We are just back from the Big Island of Hawaii where we got a chance to perform the infrequent role of hands-on grandparents to the fourteen-year-old Sebastian. Sebi, as he is called, is a very fine student and a very fine basketball player, and we do not get to see him nearly enough. In fact, since his birth we have only had a chance to spend time with him about six times including a memorable time with him in Saporo, Japan, when his father was teaching at a Japanese university, all told less than 40 days.

The fact is that in the 14 years since Sebi’s birth we have only spent a total of about 40 days with the entire family, son Scott, daughter-in-law Yumiko, and Sebi. Why that has been the case I will leave to subsequent explorations. What this trip has served to demonstrate to me is how important family contact is. We humans are not solitary creatures. We are not meant to be alone even if we have a tendency to introversion, as I do. An introvert I may be, but a hermit I am not.

Highest Form of Feeling

Being with other people is essential, but no other contact is more important than being with family. Love, not romantic love, but what we refer to as agape or divine love, is the highest form of interpersonal feeling we can imagine. Under ideal conditions, that is, when our spiritual practices are manifest in us at the highest level it is what we feel toward everyone. Until we can attain the ideal, however, it is the feeling that comes most naturally to us when we are with family.

Let me express this principle in another, equally crucial way. How can I experience love for others but not experience love for my family? It is true that our family members have the capacity to hurt us more easily and more deeply than others can because of the bonds we feel through the sense of shared inheritance and shared experience. We aren’t expecting hurtful behavior from other family members, and when it happens it can hit us very hard and leave scars that last a lifetime.

Power Translates To Responsibility

It is for these reasons that, I believe, that family members need to work as hard as they can to treat each other with compassion and forgiveness. Because each of us has the power to hurt another family member more easily than anyone else, that is the very reason that each of us has the responsibility to be especially gentle, especially understanding, and especially loving in family situations.

In summary, it was wonderful being with family for the last nine days. I found it very renewing—and the gorgeous Big Island of Hawaii wasn’t bad either.

Thanks for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my two latest books, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat and City Above The Sea And Other Poems are now available online. Links to the publisher Xlibris can be found on the sasaft website.

Copyright © 2009 by Stephen Alan Saft