Because I Am a Baby

Learning to resolve and forgive ignorance

The most read book in our household

Adreanna and I are big readers (if you’re here with us, you likely are too). Not surprisingly, we’re trying to instill that quality in our daughter and thus, our house is filled with a million baby books from our local library. The house favorite, however, is I Am a Baby by Bob Shea.

The book is about a baby who is just going about life being a baby, observing some tropes that occur as a result of his presence, despite being a bit oblivious as to what is going on. For example:

“Mommy is sleepy because I am a baby” is a page featuring a mom catching her child who is toppling out of bed, unable to rest because the baby will not sleep. 

“Daddy is clumsy because I am a baby” features a dad flying through the air having tripped on one of the many toys left around the house by his child. 

“Puppy is chubby because I am a baby” features a very round dog eating all the food that the baby has thrown on the floor as part of their own eating process (note: mom looks on in despair). 

My favorite is likely “Mommy is thirsty because I am a baby” where, at the end of the day, mommy has poured herself a very large glass of wine. 

Because I’ve read this book more times than I can count, I can’t help but try and bring it to my Buddhist practice; this is just how my mind works. 

The baby in this book is the personification of ignorance. The baby here is not malicious. The baby is going about their day, simply not aware of the ramifications of rolling out of the bed or leaving toys out or throwing food on the floor…because they’re just a baby. 

It’s a not-knowing sort of ignorance and of course, because the parents understand that the baby has no clue he is wrecking havoc, they do not blame the baby. They don’t go “stop being a baby, baby!” They love the baby, in spite of his current state of ignorance.

I was thinking about this the other day while searching for the dog treats in order to put our pups to bed. The treats were not in their usual location and I didn’t know where they could be. Rather than searching the cupboard, I puttered around the house looking for the jar that we usually keep them in, wondering why it wasn’t in its usual place. Meanwhile, everyone stood at the top of the stairs, waiting for me to finish our bedtime routine.

After several minutes of my searching, Adreanna came down and grabbed them, quickly putting the dogs to bed. Now, to her credit, she knows I wasn’t futzing around, trying to delay our bedtime. I just didn’t know how to do the thing that needed to be done and, as a result, was inconveniencing her and the dogs. This is a very minor form of ignorance and, as a result, she didn’t blame me. 

I think that a good meditation practitioner does not blame others for their acts of not-knowing, or ignorance.

Another moment of ignorance is the incident when I cut in line at the post office, not because I thought my time was more valuable than anyone else’s but because the line began far away from the desk and I did not realize that it was there (I went to the back once I did). It’s also not unlike the time I ruined a dinner because I am not savvy in the kitchen and over-cooked our meal. In all of these cases I didn’t set out to hurt anyone; I was not malicious, I was ignorant. I didn’t know better. I was a baby. 

I could probably list a dozen more such incidents from my life, dating back decades now, where I unknowingly caused harm, be it a minor inconvenience or a major heartbreak, because I was ignorant to what was going on around me. In other words, I wasn’t seeing the situation clearly.

The Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck once taught on the topic of meditation, “Practice can be stated very simply. It is moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others.” 

In my experience, the more we meditate, the more we see our world clearly, shedding some of our ignorance. This is better than the alternative, to continue the quote: “Until we see what we're doing, we will do it.” If nothing else, meditation helps us see our blindspots so we can better work on them and overcome negative habitual patterns.

I often reflect on the Buddhist idea that enlightenment is as simple as seeing ourselves and our world as it is, while samsara, our cycle of suffering, stems from our ignorance. 

If I am fully present I see that the dog treats have been moved, that there is a line off to the left and that the salmon needs to come out of the oven. If I am lost in my own neurosis, it’s like there’s a thin veil placed over my eyes and I simply don’t see the things right in front of me. 

Somehow, when I put this in the context of “I am a baby” I can forgive myself my ignorance and resolve to learn from my mistakes.

I often talk about this form of ignorance when I lead my mindfulness teacher training as it is, unfortunately, nearly impossible to not cause some form of harm when you’re talking to a room full of strangers about something as intimate as the workings of their own mind. 

It’s said that once you are fully enlightened, you can easily see other people’s karma and always know exactly how to be skillful in addressing them. For you and me though, until we get there, we are likely to say or do something that will trigger negative reactions in other people. 

From the teacher seat this might be inadvertently calling someone out for their political beliefs when you assume everyone shares your same views or - and this is a real example from my own life - poking fun at a fitness trend only to have one of that trend’s instructors come up and introduce themselves after class (I apologized! They had a good sense of humor about it, mercifully).

This is why I often end long meditation classes and retreats with the sincere closing: “If I have caused you harm, knowingly or unknowingly, I sincerely ask for your forgiveness.”

This is a traditional aspiration/closing and I love it because it acknowledges that more often than not, we are unknowingly causing harm. We are as ignorant to the situation as a baby. Does that excuse us? No. We should still apologize to our wife about delaying bedtime, the other customers in line at the post office and our dinner guests when the salmon is burnt beyond belief.

But we can learn from our mistakes and not repeat them; not-knowing transforms into knowing and, as they used to say on G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle.

I’d like to argue that not-knowing is a different type of ignorance than willful ignorance, which is when we do something harmful suspecting it could be harmful, but we can’t be bothered to avoid it or find another way.

A benign example is when you see a leaky faucet and think, “That’s someone else’s problem.” You know that you could fiddle with it and try to help but you’re tired and someone else created this problem so screw it, let them fix it. Not noticing the leaky faucet? Not-knowing. Seeing it and looking the other way? That’s willful ignorance.

When I see other people act out of their ignorance, it’s surprising to me to see how quickly I spiral into the belief that they are no baby, they are a bad person: “That world leader is causing so much harm because they just want what they want and they don’t care who they hurt to get it!” 

I assume they are enacting willful ignorance and yet…I don’t know this person. They may not fully understand what they are doing or they may have been conditioned to believe certain things that make them blind to the reality of the situation.

Because I don’t know them, when I really look at them all I am left with is a desire to seek to understand them. On a good day I can take the point of view of “That world leader is ignorant to how much harm they are causing…because they are a baby.” If I am giving them the benefit of the doubt, I’m saying that if they truly understood the harm they were causing, they simply wouldn’t do it.

So this is the work I’m engaging in: forgiving myself when I make mistakes from not-knowing, avoiding the temptation to slip into willful ignorance and not judging others who may be struggling in similar ways.

When my baby does something baby-like, throwing my day into a tail-spin, I immediately forgive her; she doesn’t know what she’s doing. So when I uncover a new layer of my own ignorance I have to remember that, in some ways, I am a baby. And so are you.