When I’m in smug mode, I often enjoy watching the people around me, pointing out their bloody-mindedness and obvious mistakes, and then congratulate myself for avoiding similar blunders. See how self-reflective I am! See how relentlessly foolish they are!

            My annoying smug mode happens to me far less these days. If you need a dose of humility in your life, add a child or three to the mix, and they’ll soon beat it out of you, which is best for everyone involved. My previous smugness was based on the illusion that I actually had a clue about myself, my life, and my place in the universe. It was a fun illusion, while it lasted, but it is much better to see life with open eyes and to know what is real and important. I thought I was self-reflective before, and I guess I was, but I didn’t have the tools to really peer in there and see what was happening. Besides, I needed the crucible of motherhood to burn away all those inessentials, the stuff I used to think was important (money, vacations, status, electronic media, etc.), and find out what actually feeds me as a person.

 Not only am I more humble, I’m more sympathetic. After a year of breathless adaptation to my new life with our twins, I’m just getting back to where I’m not always in reactive mode. I know the first year is so important to a baby, or babies, and I just have to hope I didn’t screw it up too much, because my husband and I had a frightful time ever pausing to examine and reflect what we were doing and how we could do it better. We just did it, hoped it was o.k. In more recent months, we’ve been in damage control mode, making up for past mistakes and trying to reverse bad habits we established. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s all we could and can do, given our circumstances.

            So I don’t blame people anymore for their non-self-reflectiveness. Our modern culture doesn’t give us breathing space—we have to know we need that space and then wrestle to keep it in our lives. How quickly everyone’s time fills up:  a seven-hour school day, driving each child to extracurricular events, maintaining a household, keep a job or two, then eking out family time and extended family time in amongst the chaos. No wonder that relaxation comes in the form of purest escapism:  movies, television, video games, and music over blaring headphones. Who tells us to reflect on our lives to see how we can make it better? I am sure that in some distant time, our elders would shake their fingers at us from their rocking chairs and tell us how foolish we are and how we should jump off our collective hamster wheels, but luckily, we rejected anything the old people had to say several generations ago.

            Maybe we should listen to them, and to our children. They know in their bodies that they should be given breathing space, time to think and live and grow. I watch children in the playground who aren’t given this space, and I wonder how no one notices that they are spinning like tops. I guess that passes for childish energy these days. It often seems that we are a culture of stressed-out, unhappy people, and we don’t give ourselves or anyone else the chance to examine this fact and do something about it.

            And so, after I finish typing these words, I will sit and meditate and reflect on my myself, my family, and my place in the universe. May all of us take the time to do this on a regular basis, and dive off that hamster wheel!

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