Hurt no one – bring only joy

Modern man has miraculous powers. He flies to the moon and soars beyond the sun. He creates wonder after wonder. His inventive capacity seems limitless.

Yet if tomorrow any man designed and built a computer infinitely more powerful and complex than the most complex current device he would instantaneously be awarded a triple Nobel Prize for Science.

Of if any man constructed a pump that could run without stopping, beating 80 times a minute, without repair, without a hitch, for 70 years and more he would be honoured as the greatest engineer, the greatest inventor, the world has seen.

Yet any time a child is born – in shining home or meanest slum – just such marvels are created. Indeed, infinitely more than that. For it is not only the brain and heart of a new-born child that are miraculous and well beyond the wit of man’s invention. Every intricate part that makes up the child is incomparably beautiful, crafted to a stunning perfection. And beyond the miracle of the parts is the much greater miracle of the whole that is greater than the parts – what some call mind and others consciousness and others soul or spirit.

Any birth involves a thousand miracles. Whatever any man or woman achieves in life pales into insignificance beside the creation of a child. Mothers know this best, it is their unshakable secret. But a man can feel it too when a child of his is born and suddenly, for a blinding moment, he claims an insight into one of the very few achievements that really matter in life.

And one feels this sense of miraculous achievement at even three removes when a great grand-daughter comes into one’s life as has just happened to me. One feels that small but triumphant satisfaction that here is further proof that one has found a way to outlive mortality. Thomas Hardy put it exactly in his poem “Heredity.”

 

                “I am the family face;

                 Flesh perishes, I live one,

                 Projecting trait and trace

                 Through time to times anon,

                 And leaping from place to place

                 Over oblivion.

                 The years – heired feature that can

                 In curve and voice and eye

                 Despise the human span.

                 Of durance – that is I;

 The eternal thing in man

 That heeds no call to die.”

 

Much that I would say to my great-grand-daughter born a couple of weeks ago as she grows into life happily and healthily I pray, is contained in a poem which the great cellist Pablo Casals jotted down for the children he loved beyond even his great art:

 

“When will we teach our children what they are?

 

One should say to each of them:

Do you know what you are? You are a marvel!

You are unique! In all the world there is no

other child exactly like you! In the millions

of years that have passed, there has never been

another child like you!

And look at your body, what a wonder it is!

Your legs, your arms, your curving fingers the

way you move! You may become a Shakespeare, a

Michelangelo, a Beethoven, a Mother Teresa, You

have the capacity for anything.

Yes, you are a marvel, and when you grow up,

can you harm another who is, like you, a marvel?

No, hurt no one, bring only the joy you can!”

 

“No, hurt no one, bring only the joy you can!” That I

will say to her – the best refrain I know.