Last night my mother-in-law and I decided to go through some old family photos. We looked at baby pictures of her and her younger sisters, and my husband with his younger sisters. They were all sooo adorable ☺️ and I was amazed at how much everyone looked alike.
She showed me a picture of her daughter and I saw my husband; a picture of her mother as an adult, and I saw my baby. The resemblance was striking!
It was relatively easy to tell everyone apart but they all seemed to be a variation of the same face. A beautiful face that is being recycled from generation to generation.
Thich Nhat Hanh considers this subject in his book Peace is Every Step.
. . . when we look deeply, we discover that it's impossible to drop all identity with our parents.
Whenever we take a bath or a shower, if we look closely at our body, we will see that it is a gift from our parents and their parents.
Our bodies reflect those that came before us.
As we continue to meditate on this, we see clearly that the giver, the gift and the receiver are one. All three are present in our body. . . all our ancestors and all future generations are present in us.
Having a child of my own highlighted this idea. She's four months old now and I can see her little features developing. ☺️ I look at her and I see my father, my husband, her grandmother; all the genetic ingredients that made her who she is.
What are the chances?
I began to contemplate the probability of her even existing. Her father and I met on an ordinary Tuesday with nothing suggesting that exactly 10 years later we would have a daughter. 💐
We're from different countries and the chain of events that led to our meeting in the first place seems incredibly far-fetched. If we hadn't noticed each other, our lives and that of our family and friends would be infinitely different.
What are the chances that after meeting we would become a couple? Or even stay together long enough to have her? How unlikely is it that his parents met and then stayed together long enough to have him? Each generation multiplies these already slim odds... almost impossible odds.
Thinking about the likelihood of anyone being born is mind-boggling. It's the textbook definition of a miracle. 💫