The Gift of Love

All children are born with magic wands in their hands.

“My daughter gives my life meaning,” says a well-known actress in an interview with a newspaper. Exulted, she describes how motherhood is the best thing that ever happened to her.

“It’s so incredibly wonderful! I’ve become so unselfish. Suddenly another person has priority. I have difficulty comprehending that I ever had a life without her.”

Naturally, she had heard from friends that having children was fantastic – that it was the ultimate love. But it was only when she became a mother herself that reality hit home. “This really is the meaning of life.”

Fine words and somewhat astonishing ones when you think about it. The meaning of life? People have been searching for the meaning of life since the year dot. Have we been literally tripping over the answer all this time? After all, people are, or eventually become, parents. If the world is overflowing with people who have found the meaning of life, why aren’t they saying anything?

Well, they are actually. The overwhelming majority of parents in this world, with so few exceptions that they are barely worth counting, are prepared to state unequivocally that having children is a luminously transforming, profoundly revelatory experience. It is a brush with the infinite. It really is the meaning of life.

But this meaning of life must be experienced. It cannot be conveyed or explained. It’s impossible to imagine what it’s like to have children if you haven’t done it yourself.

Parents wax lyrical about little Lisa’s first heart-stopping steps or little Carl’s fantastic hand-eye coordination. Just look at how he managed to stick his finger right in the dog’s eye! We listen and smile at the parents’ happiness, but we don’t understand the miracle. If the truth be told, maybe we think there’s no way we would ever be that gushingly silly if we had children. Not in this lifetime anyway.

The silliness is just the crest on a tidal wave of joy.

People who have never had children don’t understand because they can’t feel what all these parents feel. They can’t feel it until they’re in that space themselves holding their own little children in their arms.

Feelings can’t be translated into words and thoughts. All parents are brimming with strong emotions and want desperately to express them. But no matter how hard they try, the translation can never do justice to the original. Feelings don’t lend themselves to description or dissection. Feelings can’t be grasped by the intellect.

So the answer to that eternal question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is a way of feeling, not a way of thinking.

What is the feeling?

Love.

All children are born with magic wands in their hands. When this magic wand touches you, love’s stardust falls over you. Actually, it may cover you from head to toe if you are close enough. You are transformed into a single pulsating feeling of love.

It’s dust from a star that was already shining. You become a reflection of Love’s starlight, a light that washes over the whole world, over all of humanity. It has always been there, and it always will be as long as there is life on Earth. As long as children are born into the world, Love’s star will always sprinkle its shimmering dust over people’s hearts.

People aren’t eternal, but love is. Love is indestructible.

When a child lifts the magic wand and love’s stardust falls over you, you suddenly feel that the insight that strikes you – which has to be your own before you can understand that this is the meaning of life – is not yours alone. Wherever you look, there are people who share this insight with you. They couldn’t have explained it to you before you were ready to understand, and you weren’t ready to understand until you had understood.

Suddenly and ultimately, it’s love, love that must be your own. Love you have in common with all humankind, with all those who have been blessed with the ability to love. They recognize love in you, just as you recognize it in them. Suddenly, you all speak the same spiritual language.

When people congratulate you on the birth of your child, they are not congratulating you on the sleepless nights, the dirty diapers, the responsibility, or the economic hardships. They don’t feel sorry for you! It’s the love they’re congratulating you on, your new membership in that exclusive club of timeless, limitless love, the love that has solved the riddle of the meaning of life. They are congratulating you on Love, which is life itself, life’s meaning, and life’s purpose.

Confirmation is everywhere. Parents, healthcare professionals, relatives – love’s stardust falls over all of them, bringing a joyful smile to every face. At the birth of every child, everyone involved is united in common, genuine good will.

The love you feel for your child is deeply personal, but it’s also a part of something bigger. Your love for your child is born when the child touches you with the magic wand, but the love has always been there too, just as the meaning of life has always been there.

Love and life are one and the same, a single universal soul, radiating its endless, glorious, indestructible light.

And everyone recognizes it. The soul’s eternal love brings a smile to everyone’s face, for it is benevolent, beautiful, pure, and it wants to do good.

When we fall in love, an experience that can turn our world upside down, we get a foretaste of the incredible effect that love’s stardust has on us when we become parents.

“Because our old selves… are dead, we want to be genuine and pure… A man who is truly in love is renewed, unbearably light, and malleable. He is no longer greedy, miserly, or jealous, since the only thing he is interested in is his love… Precisely because he has glimpsed life’s innermost secret, he cares nothing for obstacles. He feels he can triumph over all hardship, all deficiencies in understanding, all hate. This feeling of invulnerability does not dull his powers of reason. On the contrary, he is patient, alert and inventive. (Francesco Alberoni, Ti Amo, 1966).

The life you leave behind is gone forever, but you won’t miss it. Time stands still, and a clear before-and-after demarcation line takes shape. Life after the birth of your child will never be as it was, and life before the birth of your child is but a dim memory on the border of a dream. “I have difficulty comprehending that I ever had a life without her…”

The child is not the only person who is born. The parents and everyone else the child touches with the magic wand are born too. Love’s stardust glitters true and pure, open and honest, humble and responsible, patient, attentive, and creative.

Whoever is given a child to care for experiences the blessing of being born anew into a life whose meaning is perfectly clear.

Love is its own gift. It makes a present of itself to you.

You will see it in your child. You will see it in yourself. You will meet it in every thought, in every feeling that’s covered with love’s stardust when the child touches you with the magic wand.

You will see the testimony and proof wherever you look if you want to. And you will want to because that is love’s great gift to you: to want to live love.

You will want to seek it, find it, express it, strengthen it, affirm it, be a part of it, duplicate it, extend its boundaries, help spread it, partake in its victorious march over the whole world. Love gives you the will to do all this.

You won’t be content to simply wish and hope. “Now someone has to make sure that the child is taken care of, so the kid has a shot at the good life!” No, the buck stops with you. You personally will do whatever it takes to foster this child’s happiness and well-being.

Including sacrificing your own life if that’s what it takes to save the life of your child.

You want the best for someone and nothing but the best, and this is no idle wish. You have a purpose and you’ve made a decision. It is a quest whose path is graven in stone.

Your wish to live love sets in motion the powerful mechanism that prepares you for action.

Your will to act out of love comes from a steadfast conviction, a faith that you certainly didn’t realize you had. The moment the child touches you with the magic wand, an imperishable faith in love awakens inside you – not just as a glorious and beneficial spiritual condition that you succeed in attaining if you’re lucky, if you believe in God, or happen to come across some other secret entrance to Happiness, but faith in love as a higher power.

When love’s stardust falls over you, some of its singular power is bequeathed to you too. You burn with the desire to put your ability to use. Precisely that will, purpose, and decision; for love acts. It is an unyielding power, the strongest of them all.

Love puts you to work, and you want nothing more than to be its humble servant. You stand at love’s beck and call.

Love is the meaning of life. It triumphs over death. Its power is infinite.

“I’ve become so unselfish,” said our celebrity above. She no longer wanted to be a film star. She cared not one wit for fame. “Suddenly there’s another human being who takes priority.” From having been the center of your own existence with only one real responsibility - you – you now stand ready, as a parent, to care for and take responsibility for another person’s life.

The thought fills you with dread, and your dread calls forth caution, foresight and reflection.

But the feeling when you’re faced with this incredible obligation, the feeling when you’re ready to act in love’s name now that you are a parent fills you with joy, pride, energy – and yes, happiness.

Every corner of your soul is ready to love as you have never loved in your life. With a love that doesn’t seek its own reward, that reaches outside yourself, that is utterly dedicated to the welfare of another human being. Love’s stardust is falling over you, and in your eagerness and joy, your pride and expectation, you feel that you will be allowed to experience Happiness.

The happiness of parenthood is born in and lives in the constant care you give a child – another human being. This is a happiness that is unselfish because it’s so much greater than you.

You’re getting close to the core of life itself. You will be allowed to hear love’s voice, to see its signs, to be its tool, to act in this world, to live it.

Your life will have meaning, and that is the happiness. Your joy knows that love that seeks no reward is the meaning of life.

And the miracle never ends. Love’s stardust renews itself forever and continues to fall over you. All you have to do is stand close enough.

A little boy, three years old, is looking at his father, who is stretched out on the sofa with skull-crushing hangover. His face is a shade of yellowish green and he is in no shape to even stand up.

“Daddy, how are you today, really?” the child wonders, worried.

Dad tells the truth, albeit selectively.

“Daddy’s a little tired… a little sick.”

“Oh, well then, you need to rest,” says the boy and pats him very gently on the forehead.

And Dad remembers this little event, tells everyone about it, rejoices over it, and keeps it in his heart.

It was love that stood in front of him in the guise of a little boy. It was love he heard speaking, and it expressed concern, empathy, tenderness and caring. It was selfless love that patted him so gently on the forehead.

The little boy could have promoted his own agenda. After all, Daddy was home for once. He had most probably promised that they would so something together on Sunday. That’s what they usually did, wasn’t it?

The boy could have yelled and screamed, tugged at Dad’s sleeve and bugged him, reminded and demanded and recriminated. He could have gone to Mommy and tattled, and Mom would have read her hung over husband the riot act and reminded him in no uncertain terms of his paternal duties. It could have turned into a battle royal in the best tradition of family Sundays with arguing and carping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, accusations and threats, vitriolic parry and thrust - war in other words - if love hadn’t interceded.

If love hadn’t existed and lived and put forth its awesomely gentle power, Dad wouldn’t have been able to go on sleeping for a while on the sofa, a smile on his face, the little boy wouldn’t have been able to go on playing peacefully with his toys, a smile on his face, and Mom, whatever she would have thought about the situation, wouldn’t have been able to tell herself that domestic peace reigned supreme, a smile on her face.

Everywhere the miracle happens. The weak overcome the strong. The weak only seemed to be weak. The strong only seemed to be strong.

And nothing is stronger than love. Nothing even comes close. Love conquers all.

Love is always the last thing left standing – now and forever.

When your child is born and touches you with its magic wand, you are born too.

You are born into happiness the instant your eternal longing for happiness is transformed into love’s striving.

As a christening present you receive concern, empathy, tenderness, and caring – as well as the will to give these feelings the unlimited expression that is their due.

You received the happiness to enrich the world with your love, and the more you give – to your child, to the world, back to love itself – the more love you receive and the closer you come to your happiness.

You receive access to love. You receive authorization to act in its name. You receive the grace to teach your child to have faith in love’s power.

We are not always able to live love’s message. We don’t always even see the happiness that surrounds us, the proof of love’s existence and its never-ending triumphal march.

That doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Love and happiness exist. Once your little child waves the magic wand above you, you change forever. Never again will you doubt. Never again will you deny love’s awesome power – its power over you.

Concern, empathy, tenderness, and caring are what love sprinkles over you with its stardust, and the will to live these feelings will never leave you, as long as you stay close enough.

That is love’s gift to you.

The singular power of water is described in the Tao Te Ching, stanza 78. Exactly the same thing could be said about love.

There is nothing in all the world that is softer than water
But in any battle nothing that is hard and immoveable
Can endure against water’s strength.
In this respect, it has no equal.
The weak triumphs over the strong.
The soft triumphs over the hard.
There is no one who does not know this,
But no one is able to live accordingly.

The child with its magic wand will show you that the world is full of people who are trying to live accordingly.