Parenting

Hello! This is Ahmed again. And by the way, we have a name for this podcast now. It’s POV Zero — Point of View Zero — because that’s what makes most sense to me. All I’m trying to do is speak from the point of view of the zero and look at the world, the human experience, human interactions, through that lens.

In this episode I’d like to talk about parenting. Parenting from the singularity, from the point of zero. I have a daughter who’s four years old now, and she’s amazing. I’ve been very involved in her life ever since she was born, and that has been a privilege. I had work situations where I was able to be around her a lot. I was healthy enough to jump around with her, play with her. I became a dad when I was thirty, had just turned thirty-one. My energy was and still is rather high, so I can take the time and have the patience to spend time with her and do anything she’d like to do.

I speak Arabic with my daughter, although she’s growing up in Switzerland. When I was younger, I had a lot of ideas about what kind of dad I would like to be, a lot of things I thought my children would have to become. But because I had a very strict upbringing, I soon realized that the only thing I would like to do for my children is offer them a space to be themselves truly. That’s what I’m trying to do for my daughter — creating a space where she feels safe, loved, where she can express herself, where she doesn’t feel judged, where she’s not yelled at or criticized.

She’s four, still very young, so I can just speak about my experience in these four years. I know parenting is a thorny topic. We all have expectations and ideas about what it means to be a good parent. We often judge ourselves for not being the best version of the dad or mom we’d like to be.

Over the last four years I’ve tried to be the best dad I could be. But I was doing that from a perspective of performance — the same way I would go about being the best researcher, the best athlete, the best public speaker. Yet it was always driven by love for that small human being.

There are also a lot of ideas about education — “educate your children so they don’t get spoiled, don’t carry them around all the time, don’t respond to all of their cries.” These judgments are sometimes especially directed at mothers. For me, I tried to put her wellbeing first. But sometimes it’s still complicated. If she doesn’t want to go to bed and cries — the tricky thing is not to be only led by her cries, but to identify the need behind a certain expression of sadness or frustration, and respond to that need.

From the point of view of the zero, that child is already perfect. That child does not have to become anybody. A child is actually much closer to the essence than we are, because children are less entangled in the world of numbers, shapes, and forms. When a child is born, it doesn’t really see, barely hears — it just feels a lot. It is so disconnected from the world we later get socialized into, where we learn manners, adopt labels, become somebody. These small human beings are truly the masters of finding our way back into isness, into the moment. For a child, all that matters is the moment. There is no past, no future. A child just sees what’s here right now, perfectly immersed in the present.

A child doesn’t have to be anything, doesn’t have to become anything. A child is already perfect, an expression of the divine. Seen as such, any expression of frustration or sadness is only a means for us to look into a mirror and ask ourselves: what is this frustration doing with me? If I’m getting frustrated about a certain behavior, it’s an invitation to look closer, with curiosity and mercy, at what it does to us and why we’re experiencing that feeling.

It can be helpful at the human level to think about the resources we have. If we didn’t sleep enough, if we’re stressed about work, if we were in a fight with our partner, if there are other people around where we’re trying to meet expectations — really looking at where the sense of discomfort comes from.

Whenever the child reacts, it’s an expression that something is off in the frequency. And from the point of view of the zero, it is perfectly fine if there is frustration. Even if a child does something that looks bad in human terms, there’s no such thing as bad or good from the point of view of the singularity. There is no duality. A child can just behave in a certain way, which acts as a mirror for us.

Of course, when a child hits another child, we can intervene. We say, “We don’t want that — it hurts.” But that intervention can happen in a way that is merciful, not judgmental. It doesn’t have to go beyond the intervention. Full acceptance that this child had the urge, embrace it, intervene appropriately, and let it go. You don’t need to think, “My child is so aggressive” or “My child has to change.”

If we start with that energy, children absorb it. They soak it in. They will feel any projections you project onto them and react to them. As soon as you have expectations about how your child should be, that creates friction. It puts you in discomfort, which creates a space where more friction generates for the child too.

If everything is fine as it is, all we can do is stay in unconditional love, whatever the child does. Even if the behavior is hurtful, we intervene, we name it, then we let it go. If we keep reproducing past situations to project something onto the child, that creates new friction.

From the zero, if we are already all of us nothing — no past, no future, time and space collapsing — then the child as a shape and form is a means for you to experience the divine, the singularity, and to be in awe at it and observe what it does, in a merciful and gracious manner.

That also means you don’t have to be afraid to lose your child. We’re all going back to the essence, and we came from the essence. There’s nowhere to go, nothing to which you can lose your child. Your child can just go back into that space of unconditional love.

In Arabic, in Islam, there’s the idea of Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un — we came from God and we’re going back to God. That’s the only thing we know. We came from nothing, and we’re going to that place of nothingness. Life is just what we’re doing in between.

If we stay stuck in the fear of losing a child, we’ll behave in a way that’s eventually detrimental to their development. We’ll be tempted to control, to contain, to keep them from doing certain things. We project our fears onto them. They’ll be conditioned by our fears. We’ll take our backpack and make them wear it. There’s no reason for them to wear any of our backpacks.

There’s really nothing we have to do for the child other than create the space where they can flourish, remain close to the essence. Give unconditional love, safety. Refrain from judgment. Don’t project. Accept them fully. Look at them with eyes filled with awe. Observe how amazing they are — when they laugh about certain things, when they say certain things, when they put things in places where they don’t belong but which are really funny. My daughter just takes stuff and puts it somewhere else, and I find it and think, what does this have to do here? And it’s a moment of pure joy, because they just disrupt the idea we have of how things should be.

Having children is a gift, a divine gift. Children should never be a space where we vent our frustrations. They will always force us to look inside. They don’t leave any space for us to react outward.

You might have had the experience that your child just doesn’t change, whatever you tell them, and it’s so frustrating because they’re not learning what you want them to understand. That has nothing to do with them. It’s all about you. It’s an invitation to look inside and ask: what can I learn through my child, this mirror, about my own frustrations? What ego construction is the child pointing to through their action? They’re just revealing things inside of us that often don’t make sense, things that create friction — and we can see them as somehow absurd.

Children as tools — not in the sense that we use them for our own interest, but tools we can use to find the way back to the zero, to the inside. Like with any situation, even violence, where we cannot express our frustration or achieve justice. When we realize there’s no place where we can get that outcome, we’re forced to sit with it and let it go. And then we’re invited to look inward: what can I do to remain happy and joyful despite what’s happening on the outside?

Tantrums, any behavior that might be annoying — it’s an invitation. And what’s important is not to judge yourself if you feel like you had a bad day, like you were such a bad parent. From the point of view of the zero, you are perfect as you are. All you can do is let go of the ego constructions and concepts that take you away from the essence.

Try to stay as close to unconditional love as you can. And if you feel like you had a bad day, don’t beat yourself up. Take it with mercy, as a reminder, an opportunity. You can always do it differently next time. Let the past go. Each moment is a new decision. You can decide to recreate that space of unconditional love every day. You don’t have to stay stuck in a past which you keep reminding yourself of, because there is no past in the zero. There’s just the now.

And that’s incredibly light. The past is heavy, like a backpack we carry around and make our children wear. Depending on where you come from, there are a lot of cultural ideas about what it means to be a family, familial entanglements — you can let them go. The only thing that makes sense from the point of view of the zero, of the singularity, of the divine, is unconditional love.

That’s all that counts. That’s all you will do anyway in the end. That’s all you are anyway. So you might as well go there now. Or stay entangled in whatever concepts you have of how things should be. That’s also completely fine. From the point of view of the zero, it will all go back to zero at some point. So the rest is distraction. At least make it a beautiful distraction.

That was episode five — on parenting, from the podcast POV Zero. Now we have a name. I’m sending you lots of love, unconditional love. Be loved, and really believe it: from the place of unconditional love, you are loved just as you are. There is no judgment. There’s no such thing as judgment day. The divine is infinite. It is just what it is. If you beat yourself up for anything, it’s just you recreating a story that creates frustration and pain — you don’t have to do that. You’re perfect as you are. Spread love, and be safe. Peace out.