I have been without my mother for nearly two years now. I have seen her only infrequently and for short periods of time. I am standing now at the railroad station of the small village where I reside with a Polish family. With disbelief, I watch her approaching. She has come to take me back with her to Warsaw.
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When you are six years old, how do you exist without your mother? As an adult I cannot comprehend concepts like “the meaning of life,” “existence,” “who are we and where did we come from?,” “infinity,” “the universe,” “what was there before the universe?” These are concepts that make the mind come to a stop. My imagination can go no further.
I should also add to these concepts one titled “The ‘No Mother State Of Being.’” This was one concept I could not attribute to the mysterious ways of the Creator. All the other concepts were outside of me, this one, however, was inside. How can you find out who you are when you are still being born? When she who gave you life and continued to do so outside of the womb, was gone.
Unlike the caterpillar, which is left inside a sack of nutritional matter and continues to absorb and grow into a butterfly, I was left with nothing to absorb. It was an incomprehensible state of being, to not be fully formed, to be only partially resolved. How does a not-fully fashioned being, one partly pieced, maneuver herself? Is it possible to deal with the outside world and be only a fragment of your whole?
The answer I found out was yes, it was possible, but at a very great price! The threat to survival reveals that the mind is instinctively creative. The pre-threatened mind is at a loss, but the threatened mind develops solutions never to have dawned on the relaxed child.
I believe that great anguish does something to the mind. The mind wants to heal, to restore an equilibrium. The anguish, like a taut, trembling cord continues to tighten until the tremulous vibrations stop. Because the mind must have constant movement, a solution, like a new seedling, emerges. The tight string disappears, provided the thought is a satisfactory solution. If it is not a satisfactory solution, other thoughts will arise until the string can disappear.
If the string does not disappear, a state of panic arises, at which point no reasonable solution is any longer possible.
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