My son: The Present No One Wants.
A Christmas tale rarely told about the gift in life’s greatest challenges.
By Eh'den Biber
This upcoming week millions of families all around the world will celebrate the birth of Jesus, the child that grew to become a prophet and inspired the creation of a new religion. Some will do it in nature, gazing at the stars with loved ones. Others will celebrate it at home, with their families and their friends. Some will end up at a party, drinking till forgotten, or find themselves snorting a huge amount of cocaine into their nostrils to to forget how lonely they feel, …
(images and sounds fade into the night. Darkness fills the screen. After a while, sunrise images slowly flash into the mind, or is it a screen?)
It’s morning!! What a beautiful world full of love…
“CUT!”
“what’s wrong darling?”
“That’s not real. This was supposed to be real.”
Oh my love, the mind is never real. Are you sure you want honesty this morning?
“Yes, I am certain”
OK dear, whatever you say…are you sure?
(taking a deep breath) “Yes”
“I love you so much. OK bringing back reality in 5,4,3…..
Eyes open. Ouch, can someone please turn down this thing? Oh that’s life? Ouch. Still hurts.
Where am I? (my brain kicks in to give me an update):
“Boss: we still have Islamic terrorists. We still have Donald Trump. We still have global warming…. And you still have that mother in law”
“NO!!!!!”
“OK, OK, I can fix it”
(That’s my ego to those who don’t recognize)
“I’m going to solve it, don’t worry… wait – is he still here? What is your son doing here?”
STOP STOP STOP
STOP!!!
I can’t fix this. I still have Rephael. He will never go away. He will forever need me to be there for him. Nothing I can do can change it, and I cannot fix him.
I DON'T WANT TO HAVE A CHILD WITH AUTISM!
THE TALE OF THE UNWANTED PRESENT
How does it feel to be a parent of a child with severe autism? Let me try to show it to you:
(imaginary Flashback-like video, via a Kodachrome filter. A child is waking up in his beautiful room, a day after Xmas. He rushes down the stair, sees the Xmas tree…. And now the narrator continues…)
When you were a child, did you ever wake up a day after Christmas to discover the present you always wanted is right there? Or when you were a child, did you ever wake up a day after Christmas to discover the present you always wanted is not there, and when you searched for it after almost dying your heart out you discovered it was there?
That’s not what I’m talking about.
Try to imagine you are a child that discovered the day after Christmas to that everyone else got a shiny presents and you where left with … something no one wanted, something that even the non-Christians neighbours will resist accepting “as a present” even if it will ignite a whole new inter-religion conflict.
That’s your present, and you can’t let it go. EVER. You can’t. it’s your present, till you die.
I received a present no one wants - a child with severe autism, who can barely say a few words, who struggle being a teenager in an angry world and confusing body changes, who no one seems to understand and so many are angry upon, or fear.
NO ONE wants to have a child with autism. No one wants to look at his son and think to himself “he is going to need me to take care of him until the day I die”. No one who have a child with severe disability think to himself “there is going to be a happy end to this.”. It’s not. Never. Ever. EVER.
(tears cry along my face, while I struggle to write)
(silent)
My ego, what I called "I" struggle with Rephael. My ego doesn’t want Rephael to have autism. My ego tried to fix him for so long and it didn’t work. My ego lost the war.
(darkness)
(total darkness)
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
(light fill the screen like a CRT screen waking to life, as the imprints of the electrical charges on phosphor dots, working in harmony with the focusing and deflecting coils creates an illusion of an image. Yes, I’m that old to remember) LESSONS LEARNED
What did my unwanted present teach me about the light in life? A LOT. Let’s summarise it in three points:
Recognise who you are. That thing inside your head, that voice you hear and that you that it does not want that present? That is not you – that is your ego. Ego can best be described in two words: “Donald Trump”. Yes, you are forever trumped in your mind, and if you think your ego is any difference than Donald Trump, let's give it a multimillionaire father who saves unused nails and mixed his own floor cleaners while buying a new car every three years. If you think your ego can do better in such condition you are as delusional as Trump is. Next time the strange coloured thing with whatever that thing is on his head appears on your TV Say “thank you” for not having a Trump as part of your karma cycles. Bless Donald for trumping it all for us.
Stop wanting, begin being – one of the biggest oxymoron that dominates our lives is “I want to be happy”. You cannot “want” and “be happy” at the same time. Being happy is a state of no want. The other oxymoron which dominates our lives is “I love you”, when said by the ego. Our ego centric sense of self think it is “I”. So when it says “I” it means the non-all-inclusive, constant judging, endless narrator, present hater. How can this “I” love “you”? The only way that sentence is right, is when it is written and expressed by its fullness “I (am the) love (that is) you”. Being in the now is the only place where you are safe because only there the ego and its judgements are seen for what they are.
Love everything, especially whatever seems to you as an unwanted present: Life is a choice, but not what our mind and ego thinks. The ultimate choice our true self ALWAYS have is how it experience whatever it have, and we are blessed with the can only experience it via love. We can all approach life with the same sheer of wonder a little child have when it sees something for the first time, by remembering who you are by living a life dedicated to love, compassion, kindness, happiness and stillness.
And with these ideas, which were preached by one Jewish guy who was born about 2000 years ago, I will end by saying to those of you who celebrate his birth: Merry Xmas.
Enjoy your life's present, by being here, now...
Play it, Bill…
https://youtu.be/sYi7uEvEEmk