Chương 80: Book 3; Chapter 79; Little Possessions

"And that is the story of how Rainee and Blake met," Old John smiled at Anniet, who was listening intently to every word he said.

"No, no, no, no, no," Anniet objected rapidly, shuffling herself closer to him.

"It is not all the story! No! That is not fair! You stopped in the middle!"

"Did I?" Old John played surprised, but it could be easily seen that he was laughing inside.

"I thought I extended it by a great deal and added to it some extra events, not related to Rainee and Blake's meeting."

"Well, maybe yes," Anniet couldn't do anything else but agree, "but by doing so, you made it one story, and it counts now as one. And you didn't finish it."

"Hmmm, I presume it is sort of my fault then," Old John smiled.

"So what else do you want to know?"

"All! I want to know all!"

"All? That wouldn't be that easy."

"Why?"

"For the very same reason as I mentioned before, even the life of one person is not just one stream that is easy to follow. Ever so often, things that are not worth mentioning make an invisible impact that influences further events more than moments that are spoken of in legends for generations. And here we have a few lives that merged together just for a brief time and separated again into different directions.

And although this encounter may have left a lifetime imprint on everyone who attended, all little rivers went in different directions, and it won't be that easy to follow them all."

"Oh! So they got separated…"

"Yes."

"So what happened?"

"To whom?"

"To Rainee?"

"Rainee? She stayed true to her word and travelled a lot, meeting many people, visiting many places."

"So she didn't go home to see her mother? Well, she didn't know that it was her mother then. So maybe she didn't love the Queen as much as she would have if she knew."

"Many people would support your thoughts, however, not many of them, including you, know yet what true love means. Once you understand it, you will also understand that for love, there is neither family, nor bloodline, nor homeland, nor race. You either love or you don't. And once you truly love one particular person, it is extremely difficult not to love others. Do you want to know what that one person in everybody's life is?"

"Mother?" Anniet asked carefully. She would have said "child" as everyone was always saying that a mother's love is the strongest. But then mothers often have more than one child, and John said it should be only one person. Also, some people didn't have children. But every single one had a mother. Old John was watching her with his laughing eyes as if knowing what little turmoil his question made in Anniet's head.

"Did you really love your mother that much?" he asked. Not that long ago, Anniet would bravely say "yes". But now she didn't dare to say it. She knew it would be a lie, but she didn't dare to admit it yet. But could she say "no"? She couldn't do it either.

"Don't be too harsh on yourself," John smiled at her.

"You would not find a single person who, by saying 'no' to this question, would be telling the truth. But also, any grown-up person who would say that they love their mother the most would be either misled a lot or not allowed to live their own life yet. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Every person loves their mother most while she is carrying them inside – they don't have anyone closer than their mother.

Every baby will love its parents, particularly its mothers, because they feed them, and for that time of life, there will be no other person closer. But that's where people got most deeply mistaken. Love is very present; it does not live in either the past or the future. Anything that is in the past or future is either memory or fantasy, but not love. I can see you are ready to oppose it, and in your opposition, you would be on the same side as me in my statement, despite us seemingly taking different sides.

If you think about a moment when you loved someone in the past, then it is a memory; it has been and gone, and there is no love left. You cannot think love. Well, you can, but it is not love anymore. Because love you can only feel. If you think love, or speak love, then it is not love, it is just you thinking or talking about love. But. If you feel into the past, to when you loved someone, you will find out that you still love them in that very moment. But the word 'loved' doesn't fit.

Y ou would feel that you love, not loved. And it doesn't matter that it is in the past. If you learn to feel into the past, not to think about the past, then you will realise that feelings don't have a past, you will feel it just the same now as you felt then. That's why it is not possible to miss a feeling. Maybe it is not the right wording, but it isn't easy to find better.

People who lost the ability to feel or whose ability has been reduced will surely miss feeling, as they cannot do it anymore or at least not to the same degree. But for people who didn't lose this ability, feeling now and feeling then are just the same. And that's where the major difference comes between babies and adults, babies don't have memories. I mean, sort of thinking memories. Their lives are in feeling.

If, after birth, the baby is taken care of by someone else other than his biological mother, he will not miss her, no matter how strongly he loved her. It is because he never "lost" her, as when you feel in the past, now it feels just the same as then. And babies don't look or think into the future; they are not afraid either. Babies are very present, and they will love those who are closest to them at that very moment. They don't suffer from the change in people looking after them. That is the drama of the adults.

What babies and even small children suffer most from is the dramas of the adults. If the mother of the child is terrified that the child might be taken away from her, then the child will take this terror as its own, as that's how babies are learning, if the mother of the baby is worried for his future, then the baby will feel worried for his future even before knowing what the future is. If the mother feels the pain of separation that is approaching, then the child will feel that pain too.

If the mother feels just love for the child, for the people who will look after the child and is confident and even looking forward to the child having a great future, that's how the child will feel. Any trauma inflicted on a child because of the change in parents is purely just negative feelings absorbed and imprinted into a child because of their first parents' fear, guilt, shame, and pain.

The sad thing is that love and those feelings don't come together, so at the time when a mother is worried about what will happen, afraid for the child's future, feeling guilty or ashamed, then she is not loving that child. In an ideal world where mothers would understand that their role in their children's lives should be relatively very short and wouldn't make little possessions out of their children, the children would not be so privatised.

One mother would love another mother's child no less than her own, and the child would not mind who is looking after him, as long as he is loved and looked after. When he grows, he will start making preferences, but not while he is a baby. If you were able to feel what I say, not just listen, then you would understand that for a baby, for a small child, a mother or a stepmother, or even stepmothers, don't make any difference.

There might be a different mother every day, as long as every mother loves him, and the previous mother handles him while loving with confidence that the next will provide excellent care too, he will not suffer the slightest. And he will love each of them, maybe differently, but no less strongly. And he will never lose or "forget" any previous caretaker, as his memory, yet, is not in thoughts, it is in feelings. So in reality, there is no such thing as a child loving his stepmother less than his mother.

Not in a baby's or a child's world. These thoughts are born from adults and then planted into the heads of the children when they are already capable of thinking. So, when Rainee was a baby, or a child, she didn't love the Queen less than, let's say, Angus or Ruffus. She was the same mother to her as she was to them. Even if the Queen had loved Rainee less than if she had known that Rainee was her true child, it would not have any effect on Rainee, as she couldn't miss something that she didn't know could exist.

That is again just an outcome of an adult way of thinking. So don't be confused that you are incapable of answering my question, neither "yes" nor "no". Because, yes, there was a time when you loved your mother the most. And no, love for the mother never was meant to be the strongest for a person who starts to experience life, nor was it meant to be everlasting. Love for your second half will be much stronger, love for your children will be much stronger, and love for your friends will be much stronger.

A child's love looks so big only because his world is tiny yet, and that love for his mother takes over all this little world. But when the world of a child starts to grow, that love doesn't grow together, it stays the same. The more fulfilling life a person has, the smaller their love for their parents will be, not because it has shrunk, but because life has expanded. Of course, if that life is filled only with pain and suffering, then sure, the love for parents will shine bright in it.

But I doubt any loving parent would wish such a life for their children. If later your mother becomes your friend, then this love grows, but not in the love for your mother. No. It grows in love for a friend you find in your mum as a person. So again, for everyone who hasn't made good friends, mum might be the best and only friend, but that is just because their lives were not that eventful or fulfilling.

It is difficult for mothers to understand this very simple universal truth, and they cause a lot of grief to their children because of this lack of understanding. People in our world are not that generous in true love; they call by the same name many other things, but still, it is just a name. When a child is born, parents, and especially the mother, are the world to them, and parents have all their love just for themselves.

Most people can feel it, and for many, that might be the very first time in their lives when someone truly, unconditionally loved them. For people who are rich in love, the love of a child would feel very, very small. For people who were never loved with a whole heart before, it will feel very big, as they didn't have anything so pure before. And when a child starts to grow, his love for parents doesn't shrink, it just doesn't take the whole of him any longer, as he starts to love different things too.

And for parents, it feels like they are losing it, and they try to earn it back or even hold it back by force. They try to captivate children's attention to themselves, they try many harmful things, not understanding that they are chasing after something that is impossible to maintain.

Sometimes a child becomes so emotionally crippled that it is afraid to spare its attention to anything other than its parents, but that is just heartbreaking and goes against all natural flow, and there will be a time when, after losing its parents, the child will simply not know how to live any longer.

To understand how bad it is, one should see it as if parents were crippling their children physically by cutting off parts of a child's physical body, just to make sure that the child doesn't leave the house to look at anyone else. And after parents die, this armless and legless child is left at home on its own. So my answer is no, it is not the love for mothers.

You are right, we all have parents, and we all have mothers, and we all have love for parents, but this love is not expandable, it is not able to grow, so it is not the love I am talking about."