Pain of Separation

“Hu aah! Hu aah! Hu aah!”

Cries the newborn child.

Why did he scream out loud? Can you feel his sentiments? What did he complain? Who could mend his broken heart?

No new-born child smiles as he emerges from darkness into the brightness of the world. With eyes closed, he stretches his arms and kicks his legs as it dangles at the hand of a conqueror who slaps him on the butt!

Now as he cries on top of his lungs, he refuses to see the light and fears the cruelty of his new world.

No one could understand his sentiments while he screams in torment. His emergence seems to punish him harder, now he becomes in despair as the grimace shows in his face. As the light frightens him, he could not keep calm.

Nothing could give him peace except the dark cavern where he longs to return to: his mother’s womb.

He trembles in fear as the mantle of chaos wraps his body. How could he remain tranquil in his new home when nine months of blissfulness inside the dark but quiet world is a great joy for him, though he is all alone? Perhaps his scream could mean:

“I am not loved” “I am forsaken” “I am tortured” “Do I deserve this suffering?”

He seems to lose everything when he leaves his peaceful world. The saddest part of his agony is to share his suffering with no one else but himself.

The stretching arms, the kicking legs, and the loud cries show how separation from a loved one hurts and frightens a newborn child.

Perhaps, this circumstance surely teaches us unabating intimacy and the thirst for tranquillity.

When Layla disappears in Majnun’s eyes, he becomes crazy that whatever he sees, whoever he meets, he sees Layla and nothing else. This romantic tale surely awakens our hearts with a certain degree of love and the zeal for unity.

When Shams departs, Rumi laments with a bleeding heart. He could not understand why he should leave. Perchance, this event enlightens us about deep affection and the grief of longing for the beloved one.

Going back to the newborn child who could now adapt to his new home, does he still care or love the one who gives him life? As he learns to crawl and walk, he wants to be left alone and hates being hindered for his idiocy.

He starts to ignore his beloved mother and complains when she corrects him. Now he forgets her over his happiness outside their home. While he enjoys a temporary adventure in a transitory pleasure of his new glittering world, he becomes ungrateful.

Now who is this newborn child who cries his heart out as he gets out of his paradise?

Perhaps, we are this “newborn child”, who loves to separate from the Beloved One; who turns ungrateful and becomes blind by prosperity and heedlessness; who remains astray as the blanket of forgetfulness cloaks us; who becomes lost as busyness and multiplicity chain us; and who depends on the world too much and ignores the One who deserves the most of our attentions.

Now at this moment in time, do we realize and offer gratitude to the One who breathes His Spirit unto us? Do we weep and lament of being distant from the One who continuously nurtures us? Do we yearn for the Presence of the One whom we use to love? Do we struggle to search and find our way back to that dark but peaceful cavern?

As Rumi cries, “Separation and parting from Thee is difficult, oh Beloved, especially after Thy embrace.”

It is beyond doubt that the worst and the only separation we could ever experience is detachment from the Beloved!

© Copyright 2000 JoyWadi 111217