Daniela Ginta, Freelance Writer

Gratitude makes the journey better. Kindness, too.

Category: Motherhood Page 10 of 18

So… Kindness

By

On February 22, 2016

In Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ Mahatma Gandhi

Suns to giveThe boys and I used to play a game. If you could have one wish… Or three. What would you wish for? One of mine was always ‘that there is enough kindness in the world’. The boys would smile and tilt their heads.

Of all the things you could wish for, Mom? Of all. Of any. Just like that.

Kindness. It’s what we crave. Smiles and warmth; the touch of brightness that someone’s kindness brings forth and makes into a hug. The thing that’s often the hardest to give.

Not because we don’t want to, but because we’re often locked inside. Because somehow, somewhere, when we were just about opening our eyes to the world, we were met, every now and then, with a cold breeze rather than the warm one our hearts were primed for.

So we learned to hide the wish we wished for. Kindness. We learned to say ‘perhaps I am not worthy of it’… Then, an even colder breeze took ‘perhaps’ away and the certainty of unworthiness spread like an algae plume taking over a lake. Clear becomes opaque and troubled. We’ve all been there, we’ve all lingered a bit too long at times in that realm.

Kindness reverses it. It is always a few words away, a hug away, from wherever we are, whenever… It’s what we need the most of, it is what we often give or receive the least of.

I will always remember the last conversation I had with my Mom. It was kind and warm like an embrace. The last moments I had with my Dad were hugs and tears. Kindness and forgiveness became the ground for later understanding that without them every day is a burden. But each burden becomes a lesson. Each memory too.

I carry mine as you carry yours. We ought to remember the occasional unkindness too. Loud voices, storming away from people, seeking a refuge. Wanting to be at peace with the world and yourself, but running away from both. We all do it until we learn that until kindness comes from within, it can never happen for real…

The parting words to last us into the next hour, or the next day, or the rest of our life… are they going to just echoes of the stomping and the shadows of frowns?… The regret of having let go of kindness for a bit becomes a sharp bite and then a healing wound.

We learn kindness from understanding that we’re all fallible, all humbled by how easy it becomes to bring our hearts and minds to a new start. ‘Try again’ is a soft breeze that takes us sailing farther than anger and resentment ever could…

To be kind is a choice. One that has us open our eyes to a new day and say ‘I want to be kind’. One that has us look into ourselves and upon seeing all the broken bits, we take a deep breath and think that all that we are – broken bits included – deserves kindness. We walk on the path where others walked too, we see the wells of their steps filled by the same: joy and sadness, hope – lost and found again, will to live and love, desire to be listened to and understood, the need for kindness. We gain compassion for the other travelers when we stop to soothe our own aching feet.

To be kind is a choice that powers more than our face muscles to open into a smile. It is what makes us reach to those who need a word, a hug, or no sound at all, but a listening ear. It is what makes us forgive and ask for forgiveness. It is us be willing to show ourselves vulnerable. It is what makes us soar, tattered wings and all. It is what mends them…

To be kind is a choice that allows us to build instead of destroy and see instead of turning a blind eye. To be kind is to come to the realization that we are the measure of kindness and through what we give we can make someone’s world brighter. And just like that, kindness fills the heart of those who give it.

That’s why I wish for it when I’m asked. Not because I am always kind, but because I need to remember to be. Because I can choose.

Children Matter. Period.

By

On February 20, 2016

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood

Originally published as a column in NewsKamloops on Friday, February 19, 2016. 

momentsThere is nothing scarier or more upsetting for a parent than to feel helpless as he or she watch their child struggle with something they do not have the key to solve.

Last night found me wrestling thoughts of helplessness as I laid next to my youngest whose asthma flared up again a couple of days ago after a long dormancy. His breathing was my worry metronome.

Yes, for a while it did not bother him. As much as I would like to say that I almost forget it exists, that is not the case.

Whenever I pass by the hospital I think of it, whenever I see a cat I think of it (yes, it is cat-triggered yet ever new episode makes us wonder whether other allergens will become dreadful asthma triggers as well), and though I am not a pessimist by nature, the memory of his raspy breaths can easily demolish the earnest smile I could muster on a good day.

Something switches forever inside one’s heart when their child is born. You can’t quite identify it to put it in proper words but the short of it is ‘I’ll do anything to keep you alive and thriving’. And then, every now and then, we are put to test.

It’s humbling to realize how powerless we are when that happens. We turn to prayers and hope-building thoughts, we toss in our beds and renew the promise ‘whatever it takes’ and then we don’t let go, no matter what.

In my experience, the most important thing that happens when such occurrences bring us to our knees is to know that you are not alone. Many people are though and that is something no one should hide, but expose so it will not happen again.

As we went through a day of whizzing and monitoring the little guy, reaching for the puffer when needed, my thoughts traveled, as they often do, to all parents out there to struggle with not knowing what the future holds. We really are in this together.

There are degrees of uncertainty, as many as there are affections. There is though that common denominator that joins all parents: the worrying, the occasional relief just to get your strength back, the never-ending hope and the knowledge of how vital it is to not be alone as you face it all.

While some serious health problems occur just because and the cause is almost impossible to pinpoint, hence we resort to saying ‘genetic causes’ and leave it at that, while still not giving up the fight, others are avoidable and, worst of all, caused by human action. Irresponsible action that is. And that is simply unforgivable. That is something we need to know about, act upon and learn from.

Case in point number one: Flint, Michigan. If you’ve been reading the news about the town of almost 100,000 where people have been drinking lead-laden water for long enough to face serious health consequences, it is hard not to be horrified when you think of the dreadful reality that the parents of those thousands of children are facing.

Someone, somewhere (and it is not hard to know where as inquiries take place) decided to save money while putting people at risk. As always with any risks we take when it comes to a population group, the most affected will be children. Their small growing bodies can only take so much, and many of the consequences are irreversible.

Lead poisoning is one of them. Even small amounts can wreak havoc with a child’s body (with an adult’s too but the scale is different and for the scope of this column I choose to focus on children’s issues) causing irreversible damage. Ditto for unborn children.

A case that should serve as a reminder that our children are vulnerable and though resilience is one of their stellar qualities, they can only do so much when their health is becoming the subject of a Russian roulette game played by people who have the power to make decisions.

Case in point number two. The hydrocephalic babies born lately in Brazil and other areas of South America where a GM mosquito species resides and is being thought to spread the Zika virus, which many scientists believe to be causing the birth defects observed recently. Some environmentalists’ groups point to a pesticide called pyroproxyfen which was sprayed in order to kill the mosquito larvae in some areas as the culprit.

The answers are still not in, the debates are still raging. The reality that mothers of babies born with severe birth defects – many of them with limited access to funds that would help them care for their babies as they grow and face innumerable challenges – is a hard one to fathom. And the actual one they are left with.

The two cases and so many more remind me of these things: with our actions today we influence the fate of our children and their children. In how we plan our life and theirs we can make choices that honour the role we were given, as their protectors, to the best of our ability, and their defenders, in face of those who attempt to make bad choices.

It’s coming down to this: as much as we can, in raising our children – and the Earth village are all included here – we have to give it all. We have to keep our actions in line with the promise that matched the love we felt when we first laid eyes on our children.

Whether it pertains to digging mines or building pipelines, or to allowing the quality of air to increase as sales of new cars soar, there is but one way to do it right: the health of people comes first, children first of all.

In everything that we do at the community level, city and planet, we have to be mindful. Sometimes we really only have one shot to make it right. For them, for their future, for honouring ourselves and those who once cared the same for us.

Why We Need To Fail

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On January 27, 2016

In Homeschooling, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

‘I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.’ Carl Jung

2014-12-13 16.12.09We need to fail. Not to be failures, but fail at. Dot dot dot. Failing at (fill in the gap) defines the very thing that happens occasionally (yes it does, to everyone, whether we admit it openly or not, or at all), but failing at does not define a person. It should not, unless we let it do that. Sadly, it does sometimes, because some of us learn to define our worthiness through our deeds. Being a parent gives me the freedom to say that parents a behind that one, most of the time anyway.

‘You are worth it because you do things and you do them well’ is what I do not what to tell my boys. You are worth it. No buts or ifs.

Hopefully that will allow them the freedom to fail at times and admit it too, knowing their worthiness is just the same or more if they do. Hopefully they will take a deep breath and say ‘well, that didn’t work’ rather than ‘I failed.’ The latter is not constructive, nor true. If stabbing oneself in the back would be possible, that’d be it. Or rather stabbing your soul, flat out cold. Telling it to look for a better residence.

Making mistakes does not make one a failure. In fact, you can fail at many things, we all do. At being human at times, which is in fact a terrible sin if you ask me, but I’ll leave that for a later chat.

We fail at keeping up with our schedules, with our plans, with our resolution to smile more, to not raise our voices at our children (OK, I am the only one, right?), to do the workout routine or finish that long pushed-aside story which you’re almost afraid of because it seems to have developed a life of its own and you almost feel it pushing you out of its way (again, that’s just me perhaps) because you’re not good enough. Well, you get the idea. We fail at things.

We fail at making things happens or making them happen the right way, but that is what it takes to figure things out. So that’s one thing I want to teach my boys in our school at home. Feel free to fail. With a mention: when you do, do it right. Which means that once you make the realization that things did not work out, you face it with dignity but not by identifying yourself with it, then you sit down (or go for a run, whichever allows for the inspiration flow to surface) and do some brainstorming. Why didn’t it work? What can be changed to make it work? What have I learned by failing at? What holds me back from believing I can succeed?

Failure without the after steps makes for a lost opportunity. So if I am to follow logic in that thicket of thoughts that just grew out of seeds of life on this page, well, I get to a simple truth: each failure is an opportunity. To learn to do better, to let go if necessary, to change something (self attributes included), to stay alive.

For as long as you fail at things, you know for a fact that you are alive and daring. Which is a good starting point for the next adventure. That’s what I want the boys to learn. That is what I hope to remember next time when my knees are bruised and self-worth is ready to take a plunge.

Keep learning. Through everything. That is all. For now…

If Lakes Could Sing… Oh, But They Do

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On November 25, 2015

In Environment, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

Day to beThe morning snuggle and read with little boy are obligatory. You gotta have the right book too. It has to keep little kids ask for one more chapter until, pushing their face into your neck, delighting you with their gentle warm breath as they whisper sweetly ‘One more, Mama, pleeeease?’ you yield, and when the chapter ends the game starts again. Oh no, not this time. No becomes yes and the sun coming through the window splatters on the page you’re about to read. Same irreverence as the child… Can you blame them though?

We’re reading E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (again, and pretending we have no clue about what’s coming) and little boy’s apprehension of spiders dissolves with every page Charlotte proves her love and devotion towards the pig called Wilbur who can truly make you question your meat-eating habits if you’re still at it.

True to form, last week’s end saw the boys learning about animals in our little school. Past the usual anatomy and physiology – miraculous on their own of course, we snuggled to listen to talks about whether animals feel or not, courtesy of Carl Safina, an amazing scholar with a penchant for saying it like it is and an ardent desire to save the world.

We listened, and then we got very silent as we paused to think how to place all that we heard in the context of human compassion and how it should (must) influence the way we take from here onward.

WonderingsMy wild boys’ eyes could not be rounder as they learn of these things and their questions more pertinent. Truly, children have it right. Their minds uncorrupted and their ears still able to perk up and hear the sounds of the world many adults tune out. The world that matters because it keeps us alive with it.

The same old question that makes grownups roll their eyes at times… ‘Can one person change the world?’ Idealistic and dream-like, but dreams have to start somewhere. Learning is dreaming is pursuing. Children have that flame alive and burning. They say ‘I can’ until we tell them enough time ‘It’s not possible’. Then the flame subsides.

Learning comes with listening to songs that can change the tune of your own if you allow the child within to keep alive, not just in playfulness but in how you write ‘Possible’ on dreams.

This world and that A bit of a rethinking of life as we know it, but as we’ve come to discover daily, the mandate of our school at home includes shaking off limiting beliefs and making room for thinking, debating and realizing that on a good day, we’re merely seeing a sliver of all that wonder of the world.

There cannot be gratefulness for opening your eyes to a new day unless you’re poised to learn why you can do that and that seeing all that you see as you go about your day is a string of happenings that your mind can choose to learn about and understand, and in doing so you’re ever more in awe of how much you don’t know.

Hence we learn about ignorance too in our school. The value of not knowing, which, as you admit to, takes you past the slimy reality of superficial knowledge, a dreadful disease of our world, and leads you into what becomes a path to never stray from. Knowledge of the world.

It comes with square roots, and fractions, with spelled and misspelled words, it comes with French greeting phrases and stories of early explorers, with science experiments that tie you to ‘Why?’ forever, with understanding that we may be but one thread in the life tapestry. Learning to hang onto, learning that other threads are equally important if we are to tell the real story. Resilience is as much a word as it is a concept. A goal. Just like compassion.

So we learn. Learning comes with waking up mindful of what your next steps, careful enough to not step on someone’s dreams and smiles, and if you do, to have the strength and humbleness to ask for forgiveness.

SilentWhat you can seeBy the time the week ends we’re spoiled by sunshine and venture to out searching for winter wonders. Boys and snow go well together. Most times anyway. We find it: magic. White and silent, it lives where your hot breath has an echo, among tall trees with beards of snow and forest paths sprinkled with myriad tracks of animals that tell stories… stories that tie into our learning, stories we can learn.

Boys follow the path that takes us to the lake. We are at Lac Le Jeune where last visit saw us braving minus 21 Celsius, freezing toes and fingers asking for mercy. That was then…

taste of magicToday is cloudy and quiet and we’re not hoping for sun as we’re too enraptured by the whiteness of thick snow. But sunshine pushes the clouds aside and we’re stuck in sparkling beauty. I have one thought as I stare at small blade-like crystals of hoarfrost… ‘If this ever ceases to exist as such, we are poorer for it. Lost.’

Being overwhelmed by magic that reduces you to that one thought gives reason to choose the one path that makes sense after that: simplicity. Aiming for what matters.

wonder...It matters to have boys run and scream with joy as they see ice crystals perched on low branches and on the side of the lake, it matters to be there with them.

It matters to stoop down to observe tracks, signs of life, big and small, to decipher the voices of the woods, the words they write for us to heed; it matters to realize that there’s no better place to see than where everything seems hidden. Everything we need to see to learn is always in front of us, wherever we are.

Boys and musicIt matters to have the boys throw handfuls of snow on the thin ice that hugs the lake surface in a tight embrace and see their faces light up with wonder ‘Did you hear that?’ Yes, the ice sings. More? It’s a game that keeps on going. It has to. For them to learn, for them to never be afraid of joy, never ashamed of playing to get there…

The lake sings, the sun is shining brightly, birds and boys do the pitter patter on snow and under the trees, each laughing in their own way, each quarreling just the same, maybe to remind of imperfections needed to keep humbleness in place.

It matters to have that moment stuck in your heart forever, to understand that it is not in what we strive for on the outside that we find shelter in but in what we carry with us, deep inside, in how we find ourselves hopeful enough to never give up searching for better days, and wiser by having experienced the hopelessness of lost days…

To be is to learn. To learn to be. And magic is all.

Snow Falling On Growing Boys. Worthiness

By

On November 18, 2015

In Life Stories, Motherhood

Upon waking, a child’s face is sweetly scrunched up and bearing the dreamy gaze of recently peeled-off sleep. A flavour like no other. Another thing to miss down the road, another song that will keep on pouring notes into my mornings long after the boys will have grown up.

I woke up early today because the room was lit white. Snow! That heart flutter never changes. You wake up knowing something is different, a whisper of winter lays on your eyelids and you can’t remember where but you’ve seen it before… so many first-snow mornings that I left behind in the house I grew up in. The muffled sounds of my parents in the kitchen, the glow in the room, the warm covers… I savoured it every time.

Before waking up little boy I press my face against the window and look outside.

The backyard is white, and trees are again the standing candles that make me forget that beyond them is a busy road. All is muffled now. Roads no more, only the ones to my childhood and back, taking thoughts of now into then and the other way around.

simpleThe magic of the first snow, the extra blink you put yourself through just to make sure you’re not dreaming still… The white story floating all over the room, that room, this room. Time never stands still.

I wake up little boy and pull up the blinds… Little boy’s face explodes with surprise and he hides under the covers and then out again. Snow! ‘Can we build a snow shelter?’

We will. Breakfast? No one’s hungry. ‘We can eat snow.’ Indeed. Snowflakes twirl and dance with the wind, and we step outside to dance too.

Just us and a world of white. Big boy is out in the woods, winter camping with Max. A first. Celebrating boyhood and laughter among trees and sitting around a fire that can never be too long-lived. Growing boys sharing their magic with us, allowing us to peek into their joy, into their worries and silliness, allowing us to see them. It’s a two way mirror, if we work to keep it so.

‘Can we make it this tall, mama? I want to be able to sit inside.’

lil boy happyWe carry armloads of snow and pile them into the emerging walls of the shelter. I carry the big loads, little boy patches up the walls. There are magpies and crows watching us, there’s the dog next door that has yet to learn the benefits of familiarity and friendliness and his incessant barking makes us laugh.

I am privileged. To be building shelters, to be soaking in hugs and snuggles every morning and night, to have my boys learning alongside, to never think ‘enough’… Snow would not be the same without giggles and groans over crumbling snow.

The snowfall grows thicker. This is what matters. Presence. Through that, my boys hear the one thing worth repeating: You’re worth it. Being here is enough.

These days it’s about taking a breath in when you can. It’s about taking long enough to see the magpies dig in the fresh snow and admire their gracious gliding from the low bransides of lifeches of our backyard pine. It’s about wondering what they think as they do that and see us play in the snow. It’s about allowing children to never rush out of a moment that has much to impart to their lives and ours.

We leave behind a week full of grief and things worth knowing.

Before Remembrance Day the boys learned about wars. There’s much to learn. Way beyond facts and figures, we learn about people who become the facts and figures. People like us, the boys say. It is never about glorifying wars, it’s about honouring people and understanding that their sacrifice should count towards making a commitment to kindness.

It’s always easy to say it. Be kind. To do takes more. To do makes the commitment real.

‘Why do people create war? It’s so wrong!’ There is fault in wanting too much power, there is fault in oppression and there is fault in not admitting that violent action begets more violence in places where hatred is allowed to live.

Come the end of the week, terrorist attacks brought Beirut and Paris into a state of chaos and brought the big unresolved question back: Why? What makes people do that? The list of people to remember grows by the day.

Committing to kindness is the only thing I can ask the boys to do.

I commit to gratefulness for being able to savour moments that have boys and trees and snow and birds in them, moments when I hear laughter and I do not have to fear that it might disappear the next moment.

We need to find our way back. It’s through raising children to think kindly, to never forget about the wonder of the world, to see worthiness and be humble about it all.

worldsSnow dresses the world in white for now and that brings hope. The shelter has tall enough walls for little boy to sit and we’re going to find a cover for it. We hear voices and see smiling faces. Max and Tony are back. They carry last night’s campfire smoke on their cheeks and their eyes glow with the cheeriness of an adventure that added to the magic of first snow…

‘Mom, the snow is so deep up there, it’s so beautiful!’

It is just this. The moment we’re in. It’s where we come as we are.

Peter Pan Lives Here. Times Two

By

On November 3, 2015

In Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood

boy and grass‘Can you see me?’

‘No Peter…’

But I do. I see a tuft of wild hair, I see the smile sparkling like a golden butterfly from behind stalks of bunchgrass. Little boy is at it again. Peter Pan indeed.

We’ve read the books, abridged and unabridged, yet again, and we will do it one more time, and two, and three times more until little boy will say ‘now let’s read about Ivanhoe.’

We take Peter Pan from books to the hills where boys get lost among dry grasses and hide behind scraggly ponderosa pines that are still standing… Playing. There is a mystery to it all. Grass speaks to boys in wild ways. ‘Do it!’ it says to them… Run to catch the sun! Can you balance on the see-saw stump? Do it!…

To us it says the same but we’re grownups now and the sounds come out distorted. We say ‘Stop! Go slow, don’t run so fast…’. Boys snicker, throw silly looks over their shoulders as they do it anyway…

Be it so… Their feet and bodies listen to the tall grass only. As they should. The mystery itself.

yellowIt is midday Sunday and the sun is stingy with its warmth but we’re clad in wool sweaters and touques. We’re on the hiking trail we often take in the morning. It is no longer just a path snaking on the side of the hill. It is where we discover woodpeckers and blue jays and snow berries and yellow mushroom caps and talk about what makes smoke go up and how math is everywhere on any given morning before we head inside to learn more.

A trail that has become ‘the trail’ and then it has become ‘our trail’. We pin, as if with sticky notes, memories of us, of the mornings that see us hike here and talk about the things the boys learn in our school at home.

Soon we will know every turn and bush and stump.

Little boy pleas with his brother to be pirate Cecco. Say yes? He does. Taunting as the big brother words and gestures can be towards little boy at times, there’s a lot of love pouring out when he’s eagerly agreeing to play. He hops, runs, jumps and rolls as any pirate worth his salt would. Delight lives on both sides.

20151027_142332_001There’s barely any space around us that’s left unfilled with laughter – sounds so round you’d think it’s raining plump giggling droplets. I like it when that happens. Sun showers of sorts. Like silly weather, boys’ moods go from sunshine to snow to sun again in a merry-go-round grownups so inelegantly and harshly judge at times.

Boys can turn playful tumbles into war-like matches. The world of boys is a magic one. Sweet smiles and twinkling eyes one second, darts and fists flying wild the next. Like now. We stop and listen.

Peace again. ‘It’s OK, mom, we’re going to play some more.’

Max and I walk slowly behind them, gazing at shreds of clouds scattered over cinnamon hills. Quiet meets quiet, eyes meet, and the air feels warmer.

TumbleThere are giggles and rustling noises coming from behind Saskatoon berry bushes. Peter Pan’s wooden knife plunges next to Cecco’s feet and the next seconds become a tumble of two bodies down a sandy slope. Laughter so loud it makes dogs bark. Just like in the book with Nana the dog on the night of the great adventure.

Too much sand fills Pan’s boots so they come off. Little boy runs barefoot with big brother in hot pursuit. What? No, put them on, it’s cold.

‘I’ll keep the socks on!’ Pitter patter, feet get away from being questioned. Play is what they want to do.

More tumbles, more screams. I don’t know why Max and I are laughing but how else can this become a memory? An imprint of this and now? Faces get dirty and hair turns wispy after the sand tumbles and wild lost boys they are, lost from anything but playing. Lost and found, up and down, a world of their own which we have the privilege to see.

Exhaustion comes in like a nagging aunt. They lean against us as we walk home. You walk on your own, pirate, let those legs carry you home. Peter can fly…

applesThey laugh and walk alongside grabbing crab apples off the trees and picking brown leaves off the ground.

‘Can I sew leaves onto my shirt like Peter Pan’s?’

Perhaps use fabric? He did. The dining table is now a sea of green with leaf-shaped bits of fabric peeking from just about everywhere. This is learning. They both learn by touching and doing and daring. They learn by living.

Little boy cuts and prepares, he will sew them on one by one. He’ll wear the shirt and pants for a day, or two or three, bury them under new ideas and dig them out on a sunny morning when the sunshine will remind him of Peter Pan.

grass songsLet’s read some Peter Pan he’ll say, and I will say yes, and we’ll read once, twice, three times… and time will stay still. Lost boys will resurface, pirates too, and the tall grass will call to them again. Whispers and songs they’ll still hear for many moons to come, for childhood will still be here, sewn to their smiles and mischief still stuck to their hair like glittering sand and dandelion seeds are today.

We’ll follow them boys as they’ll run and tumble, we’ll be quiet and hopeful that the whispers of the tall grass will be loud enough for us to hear too…

20151101_133901 20151021_072818We’ll follow them to the edge of reason and back, again and again, we’ll walk a few steps behind, and when all silliness is done for the day we’ll all breathe in the sunset and keep that breath in long enough to remember.

Everything. The steps to here. The leap from here…

 

The Human Element Better Stay

By

On November 2, 2015

In Armchair Mayor Column, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood, Social issues

Initially published as a column in NewsKamloops on Friday October 30, 2015.

SignsLast Saturday was a lazy one with lots of snuggling and reading in bed with my youngest and a pancake breakfast that made our late morning both forgivable and pleasant.

Because of that, farmer’s market became a late affair. I visited my usual spots and filled my backpack with colours and crispness. All fall bounty in one heap, minus one preferred treat: watermelon radish. I am not sure if it is the intense fuchsia colour in the middle bordered by a layer of green on the outside that makes it appealing to my boys, but it was love at first sight and taste too. They ask for it every Saturday.

So I asked the smiling merchant about it. There had been a few but they’re all gone, she said. Sigh. Ah, missed! A guy who looked like her father or father-in-law got up from where he was sitting behind the table. ‘Here, take this!’. He handed me the last half of a watermelon radish that was saved in what looked like a lunch box.

‘Are you sure?’ They both smiled and said yes. Not much more I could do other than smile and say thank you. And another thank you as I left the market. The incident added some extra sparkling to the already bright morning I was immersed in.

Half a radish is no grand treasure but the gesture is priceless and adds to the warm feeling I associate with the market. A community is no community unless you know the people in it and the threads of your life braid with theirs as you go through life.

The human element that the farmer’s market is infused with is what makes me steer away from self-checkouts in big stores, and also opt, whenever possible, for the small local stores where smiles and a small chat are never too far. (Yes, a year-round farmer’s market would be a lovely local affair.)

The argument that we reduce waiting time by using checkout machines because they add speed and efficiency to our hurried lives does not persuade me in the least, just like self-driving cars not only don’t impress me but they actually make me shudder. The missing human element is something I cannot make peace with.

In the age of increased virtual ‘connections’ and automated devices that speed up life and unequivocally impart the conveyor belt feeling to so many of our activities, letting go of the human element might just be that one mistake we cannot afford to make, lest we should be stepping too far off the beaten path where familiarity comes from communicating with another human being and seeing other human beings around as we carry on with our day.

Also, as population increases, it would make sense to have not fewer but more jobs that even though they could be done by machines at the benefit of a few humans, they should be done by humans and benefiting more than just a few.

Having just learned that 50 percent of the world’s wealth belongs to a mere 1 percent of the world’s population (how is that for scary math?) maintaining the human element wherever we can becomes a must.

Creating jobs whenever possible and having them filled by people rather than machines can help fill the gaps that life often creates just because …life happens. When you are having an off day and nothing seems to do, it is often the unexpected smile from another human, a familiar face or not, that can brighten perspective and add a sliver of goodness.

There is no replacement for smiles, and no replacement for the human touch behind so many activities we perform throughout the day.

Which is why having more of each other’s presence makes life better. Well before human babies learn to talk, they are able to recognize and rejoice at seeing human faces.

As they grow, children need human interaction in order to develop harmoniously through the attachment bonds those interactions enable. Children learn best when human interaction is part of the learning process. No five-star computer program can replace a Saturday morning snuggle and read, just like no machine can wipe tears and hug us better, no matter how many positive reviews it has on Amazon.

No machine can ever inspire a human towards lofty goals or create the joy that an unexpected and much needed smile or kind word can bring. It is vital that we remember that.

It is only natural. We have been, are and will always be sentient beings who are complete – whether we admit it or not – by having relationships and by interacting with each other. The fact that we punctuate the important things in life by attaching faces to them and the fact that we need the human element is because life becomes meaningful when other humans are in it.

As for the cars that drive themselves, nothing can convince me that we need them. The last thing we need is to use our senses less. Being present where you are when you are there is not a chore but life itself, happening as we blink our way through it. And yes, a blink is all, so why not be there to live it fully?

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