Feeling Nothing for a Mother’s Love
I hugged my brother goodbye and felt nothing. I hurried the process along, voiced a polite but emptily playful goodbye and walked off to my gate.
While I left behind one of the most important things in the world to me my mind did not give a second thought for the moment. My heart cherished nothing.
My mother was in tears at not having had time to sit alone with me and catch up. I was focused on calendar items of purple and orange denoting meetings and responsibilities of various types.
While tears fell down her cheeks, I put a warm smile on my face to ease the transition and more quickly move on with my day and my life.
At 10,000 feet and nowhere for my mind to run, it suddenly struck me that I am incapable of the most simple thing.
I forgot how to appreciate.
How to appreciate love.
How to appreciate life.
How to appreciate kindness, affection, peace, health.
How to appreciate simple things.
Give me a monstrous problem and I will have a magnificent sense of appreciation once I have surpassed it.
Give me a terrible tangle of insurmountable difficulty and I will reflect with appreciation for years on the wisdom I expressed and strength I exhibited in overcoming the obstacle.
Give me a fleeting hug from a mother with pure love and I will brush it off as if it were less than significant on my radar.
Give me an undisturbed moment with a brother of indescribable importance to me and I will choose to dwell on whether I will have time to grab a coffee between flights that day.
There might as well be an infinite number of ways to improve my life. I know about a few of them and I chase others with a vigor worthy of your hardiest Linkedin Newsfeed gurus. There are so many things I should do, I don’t doubt that I will spend the rest of my life chasing improvements. In this endless and ever-growing pursuit of improvements on the way I live life, I rarely focus on the things I should not do.
I should not so easily forget the loving tears of a mother.
I should not so easily let my mind wander while sharing a rare moment with a brother.
I should not take so lightly the important things that I let slip by.
I should not think that that which I might chase will always surpass in wonderful reward the simple moment that finds me today, right now.
I should.
I should not.
I do not appreciate.
I should appreciate.
