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Tuesday::Jul 16, 2024

Smile

A

baby's smile is a pretty wonderful thing. It was not something I realized until my son was born that babies are not born smilers -- there are generally a couple months there in which your child is either sleeping, more or less blank-faced, or crying. Their experiences are still very "flat" in this initial period, feeling only pain and desire in the most unsophisticated forms. Like all living things, babies move toward their good, but they haven't grasped causes yet. When they start to smile, this is them understanding that goodness comes from somewhere; in this case, their parents, with whom they then enter into their first social relationship. To smile at one's parents is not to be receiving a concrete good at that moment, but rather to be basking in a known source of goodness, a reassurance that it is there, and a fulfilment at being bound together in that moment with them. The dimensions of their relationship with the exterior world starts to fill out, and they slowly begin to learn that they, too, can be sources of great goodness.