Mentoring

I miss my mom. She was a constancy in my life, there, always there, ever at the ready. She wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t a person with all the answers. She was simply love. She was someone who worried about and for me. She was a pair of eyes who watched me, saw me. She was, in the end, acceptance.

It is not easy to find acceptance. Family, friends, teachers, coaches, even colleagues represent potential, and usually intermittent, sources. Parents and siblings can powerfully motivate and extend the universe’s embrace. But not everyone is blessed to be born into circumstances in which familial acceptance may blossom. Many children are not so fortunate to have a mother like mine. And many mothers, and fathers, who can provide such security in a child’s life, whether it be biologically their own child or someone else’s, take years, even decades, to mature into the role.

I know that I myself am still doing so.

For example, last night, I was with my youngest daughter and we were descending (in a car) from a high altitude plateau in our state to a warmer valley. The last remnants of the setting sun wrapped themselves like a shaw over the rolling mesas in the distance. It was dark below, inky black. It was greying above, colorless cloud. But in between, almost by an artist’s design, was a vibrant ribbon of orange. Across the distance of space and the solar system, light from our planet’s star was refracted, seemingly perfected, into the jagged gap between land and sky on the horizon.

“Wow,” I said. We had been quiet in the car. There are times to talk with my daughter. There are times to listen. There are also times to just be present.

She watched. She waited. She then lifted her phone and, without replying with words, photographed the view. Then she once again sat still. She held her hands and her hands. She watched. She bore witness.

We sped over asphalt in a moment of still perfection. Nothing need be said. The world had presented us with an unexpected entree into exquisiteness. I felt myself vibrate with the same sensation that I used to get when I caught my mom looking at me.

Life was looking at us. Beauty was welcoming us. There was nothing to do or say. Thoughts, response, movement was unnecessary. Just pure presence was indicated. Shared witness and release. Acceptance.

We can all accept each other. I continue to learn, each day if I am open to it, how important this awareness is. Mentoring can take many forms, some obvious, others more nuanced. There are people with whom we form close bonds. They are others with whom we have but the briefest of interactions. Some folks we see every day. Many we engage with only once during our years of human experience. Each interaction represents a potential mentoring moment. This need not take the form of some effort at wise commentary. It may not necessitate much in the way of work. All that may be required, whether to family member, a friend, or a stranger behind a counter at a supermarket or coffee shop, is awareness. Presence. Eyes that look to see. Ears that open to listen. The dance of acknowledgement at the slightly uplifted corners of the mouth.

We are each others’ keepers. We are also kept by nature, the physical environment, the spiritual fields of our days. We live continuously amidst instantaneous and fleeting artistry. All of it can be nurturing. Every alluring moment of breathless being can be mentoring.

Acceptance reverberates through beauty’s timeless lens. Some magnificence is witnessed. Most is created.