Our daughter shouts this on the reg. It’s unnecessary – both the statement and the volume at which it’s delivered – because I have no interest in touching the crumpled sheet of Pepper Pig stickers or her soggy Shreddies leftover from breakfast (if you wanna eat those now, love, that’s on you).
The ‘mine’ assertions are supercharged when other kids are around. At playgroup, I try not laugh when Ruby and others her age, not yet governed by social politeness, snatch toys off each other as though they’re clambering over the last ice lolly on earth. Ownership, it seems, is intoxicating.
I listened to a podcast where spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle suggested that the ‘mine’ phase in toddlers marks the rise of the ego. We first define ourselves by the things we ‘own’. As we develop, we might- maybe even subconsciously – use ideas, intelligence, looks, status, wealth or whatever else to differentiate ourselves. How do we know what we’re like, I suppose, if not by comparing ourselves to each other?
It’s a natural part of Ruby’s development, this ‘mine’ thing. I get that, and yet I’m conscious that it may signal the masking of the innate wisdom I reckon everyone is born with. That kind of at one-ness that was so evident in the beginning will – I imagine – fade to background as she heads further down the path you and I are walking: that of being a flawed human.
My own ego has taken a bit of a beating in recent years – it has been continuously assaulted with shattering realisations that I’ve been mistaken about something or other. Honestly, it’s staggering how often I get that ‘ohhhhh’ sensation, particularly since becoming a parent.
“So, you know the years BC”, I said to Tom recently, referring to something I was reading, “isn’t it funny how they timed it backwards exactly to year 0 when Christ was born, before it became AD. How did they know when he was going to be born?” The look on his face was so incredulous as he explained that the years were calculated retrospectively that I stopped short of admitting I’d been holding this thought in my mind for a couple of decades.
Then there’s the Teesside lexicon that has coined words that sound legitimate but, it materialises, are not widely recognised as part of the English language: ‘tret’ for the past tense of ‘treat’, anyone? I’d been bandying that around in a professional setting before Tom dropped the bombshell that tret is not officially a word. My mind, reader, was blown. They missed that section out of myEnglish degree,didn’t they?
These misgivings sit alongside others that are less innocent. It has dawned on me how biased some of my long-held views are, how my opinions of others can be so wide of the mark. How I really can’t say how I’d behave in a situation I’ve never found myself in and how ill-equipped I am, therefore, to judge anyone else. But judge them I most certainly have and, for transparency – should acknowledge, still do (see the flawed human bit above).
It might be a symptom of adulthood – by which I mean my thirties – that this humble pie keeps being served up from some creative kitchen in the collective consciousness. And the realisation that I’ve misjudged something, or – worse – someone, tastes bloody awful at first. More than once, I’ve craved the certainty of youth. When I had a clearly defined – if often misplaced – sense of who I was, when I was moralistic and mostly unwavering in my views, usually broadcast over a red wine megaphone.
But, when Ruby first arrived, I started to see everyone – adults acting like knobheads, me at my most annoying, old irritable people so far from the womb they’ve almost gone full circle – and realised that everyone was once somebody’s baby. Innocent, little babies. Everywhere. How about that?
This sensation is less pronounced now than in the early weeks and months of motherhood (and thank God, because I felt ready to weep at any given moment). But, still, notions and ideas that I’d laid down as part of my identity continue to fall away.
Recognising that my own mind is always changing in a world in which one poorly judged comment can be taken to expose the essence of someone’s soul, I wonder on what basis we can nurture new life. Knowing the myriad ways in which just one person (me) continues to make mistakes, what values am I confident enough to ground our offspring in?
Something I’m landing on in light of all this (parenting, the pandemic and these unsolicited reality checks), is that – while we do need to be able to trust our instincts – certainty is over-rated. Counter intuitively, letting go of our attachment to being right can liberate us – firstly from ourselves. And wouldn’t living with each other be a bit easier if we could entertain the idea that, to quote the title of a book I keep meaning to read, “I may be wrong”?*
It’ll be a while before I can discuss this stuff with Rubes. She seems to have Tom’s temperament, so it’ll probably be a debate when we get round to it (wink, wink). In the meantime, you grab that toy, girl! And keep tight hold of the one in your other hand. This affair with the ego, if you’re anything like me, will be a long one – so you might as well enjoy it.
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* Written by Björn Natthiko Lindeblad.