It's that time of year: we approach Christmas and whatever is your religious festival or belief we are led with the imminence of a holiday – holy day – to reflect on what is this being here all about? In the case of Christmas it is pretty clearly about the birth of a baby and the hope that that brings. We all – if we are normal – love babies.
One of the saddest things in life is the joy and expectations that having a baby produces and often then the neglect and indifference which follows their birth. Truth to tell, many people have children for reasons that have nothing to do with love and the pure wonder of creation; some have babies because that makes them an 'adult' – a serious player now in life's game – at least to the social and housing services in the UK; others because that's what everyone else does and so they prove they are normal too; and yet others because they want to dominate and mould and generate inferior mini-mes; and yet still others to fill in the vacuum of nothing else to do.
But the essential identity of being human is to create, and to create is to love; for the artist always loves his or her creation; for it to be art there is creation, and for it to be creation there is play, and where there is play there is joy and endless energy – watch the children with the snow now.
So it is that the baby is the work not of one moment, or even of one nine month stretch, but of the whole life as the work matures to its fullness – to its epic fullness. Life is uncertain, so each moment must be lived, and as the jargon has it: we need to live in the moment, in the now. Just such a moment occurred for me only the other week.
My wife was out for the evening. I was at home with my seventeen year old son; a big lad, has fenced internationally for GB, and also does extensive Shaolin kung fu training. In fact likes all things martial.
I said, Joe, fancy watching a DVD? He agreed, but demurred when he realised it was one of Dad's old 70s favourites, A Fistful of Dynamite, with Rob Steiger and James Coburn – a Sergio Leone classic. But – with nothing better to do – he sat down on the far end of the settee and he began to watch with me.
Of course, Sergio made great films and shortly Joe is totally engrossed. An hour into the film he suddenly shifts position from the far end of the settee over to my end, and without a by-your-leave reclines on my right breast/shoulder. I put my arm around him and we watch the remainder of the film in that pose: my no-longer-baby son wrapped round with the arm of his father, huddled together, completely unselfconsciously. A perfect moment, perfectly now.
His babyhood was long ago – and yet in love and through love our childhoods can all be born again. Nothing changes – the eternal son and the eternal father, despite our ageing and the alterations flesh is heir to. And what is true of the father is also true of the mother: the very spirit of love. So I hope for all my readers that you too will find the heart of Christmas this Christmas in the eternal child that is with you or in you.
The Mapping Motivation Series 