My mother had a saying: “for a crow, her young is the most beautiful”. Then I found it offensive, I mean what, I’m an ugly baby crow? Only now did I understand what she meant: parents love you unconditionally, not for what you do, but for who you are. It doesn’t matter how well you do in life, how you behave, whether you lie or tell the truth, whether you’re an executive or homeless. For a parent it should not be important to be proud of you, but to love you, baby crow or baby eagle. This way you get to feel love and to love, including yourself.
Easter is about the family of origin. Jesus is the son of God, just as we are His sons, and on a smaller scale, the sons and daughters of our parents. Of course, we are sons and daughters all the time, not only at Easter and Christmas, but now the collective energy is stronger, each of us tunes into this energy, each according to his strength, knowledge and feeling.
For many of us, like me, parents are no longer physically with us, but they live on through us. I look in the mirror and see my mother’s eyes, I have a wobbly walk just like my father, I snap easily like my mother and I have a cheeky smile like my father. I learned from them everything they could teach me, and my duty is to continue learning, to improve myself. They weren’t ideal parents, but by perfecting myself I learned to love them as imperfect as they were. Because now, as an adult, I realized that for the baby crow, its parents are the most beautiful.
Easter is not about food, local customs or forced piety, because “that’s how it’s done”. But about parents, ancestors, roots. About much trumpeted and perhaps incorrectly understood love. Because love is not understood, it is felt. I keep trying to understand love logically, to put it into words, to relate it to human rules, and I can’t. Not like this. But sometimes I feel something in my chest, a sensation, a warmth, a smile, and I wonder: could this be love? That’s what I felt a few days ago looking at a photo of my parents, a warmth in my chest, and a smile bloomed on my face looking at them. No pain, no regret, no nostalgia. I felt… a smile.
What do I wish you this Holidays? To feel the love. That’s all.