It suddenly struck me yesterday as I found myself staring at every parent at the local shopping centre. Six months ago, before I had baby James, I would have filtered out all parents attending to small children from my visual sweep of the food hall. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I mentally put them in the “parent” box, fixed, stagnant, and moved on.
And now? Now I’m fascinated. As I try to disguise my interest by watching through my unwashed, baby chewed fringe, I’m wondering... How old is the baby? Where are they up to? How are they both coping? I find myself flooded with empathy for those with babies under 6 months, and curious about those further along than me. What’s next? How do they make it work?
Rather than simply being a parent, a fixed state, these strangers are suddenly people “in process” for me. I’m thinking that things change so quickly, I need to notice what’s going on. It makes me wonder - how many other people I must put into categories without appreciating their process, their journey? People with grey hair? Old. Retired. Nothing going on there. Men in business suits? Focused. Aloof. Nothing going on there either.
It’s like wearing new glasses - to suddenly realise that everyone is changing, everyone is moving towards somewhere, away from someplace else. Grappling, hoping, grieving, fearing – whether its conscious or not. Perhaps the enlightened ones are just being, but I’m not sure there’s too many of those. It makes me want to grab people and ask them to tell me their story. Where they’re up to, where they hope it will go. How extraordinary it is to be human.
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