Cruel Masters - Parenting and Personal Refinement
Our kids are like the cruellest of Kung Fu Masters - Meet the Pai Mei of your own. You'll never be the same again.
Lovers of the Shaw Brothers classic Kung Fu film canon, along with devotes of Tarantino’s faithful tribute in Kill Bill, will be familiar with Pai Mei The Cruel: the bearded, white haired, intolerably heartless master that drives his students to new heights of discipline, self-awareness and capacity. It struck me (when my three year old struck me), that having children is much like climbing the steps of an archetypal mountain to come face to face with the cruelest of teachers, and tormentors, in the pursuit of personal refinement.
Certainly, they lack the long beard, the awe inspiring eyebrows and cultural recognition of a Pai Mei, but their seeming anonymity does endow them with a sense of mysterious, powerful secrecy akin to legendary, centenarian masters hidden away in the Shimen Mountain Ranges. Certainly, rather than living in a stone temple atop a mountain range, they simply live upstairs - but one cannot be lulled into a false sense of safety and security. These little masters take no prisoners, give no quarters and bar no holds.
Your first lesson will likely be one in humility. There’s nothing like feeling your transitory, delusional sense of autonomy and efficacy being stripped away in the beautiful moment you lay eyes on your baby for the first time. Because here lies a little challenge that is nothing like those you’ve overcome before. Here lies a new mountain to scale, and when you get to the top, your reward its the little Pai Mei of your own. Forget the odd esteem with which your colleagues regard you. Forget the praise of your parents and loved ones through a lifetime of accomplishments. Forget the academic accolades and personal challenges you’ve faced and conquered. They become meaningless the second you lay eyes on that little face, with those beautiful little eyes. And yes, you may notice the distinct lack of white beard and long eyebrows, but rest assured - you will know humility. You will know it intimately. You and humility will be curling up on the cold couch of life together.
You will make mistakes. Immediate mistakes that will seem utterly ridiculous and foolish a short week later. You will screw up the feeding, the settling, the wrapping when you lay them down. You’ll install the car seat incorrectly. You’ll get the lighting wrong in their bedroom. You’ll try to keep the house quiet, instead of realising they sleep better with noise. You’ll accidentally (and repeatedly) undermine your amazing wife, who will be enduring an initiation far more intense (and hormonal) than your own. You thought you had it together? We all did, but welcome to the past tense. Now you used to, just like us.
You will be ruled by every whim, every bleat, every bowel movement of your new master, who will have you sniffing your hands hours later and wondering if you can ever wash them enough? You will be told when you can eat, when you can sleep, when you can read, when you can leave the house (temple, I mean temple). You will know the debasement of odd stains on your clothes, your carpets. You will taste (really, literally) the vomit of your little master, who decides to throw up whilst you hold them up precariously above your face. You will change their clothes, repeatedly, knowing they’re just waiting for a fresh new set before they empty the warm contents of their stomachs once more. You will try to quantify the time spent feeding against the limited time it takes for the milk leave the top end of their body.
This humility leads, naturally, to the detachment granted by tutelage under such a violent little sage. One could not exaggerate the potential for spiritual growth in having children - particularly in the realm of detachment. Your preoccupation with earthly belongings is swiftly negated as you watch them being torn apart before your very eyes, by the benevolent savagery of your little Pai Mei. With cunning accuracy your little masters are able to discern not only the weak points in your soul, but the weak points in your shelving, your plaster, your crockery, your windows and eventually, your body itself, which they may well take to next, in order to remind you of its fragility and transience.
The destruction of objects and spaces you once held dear was only the beginning of course, as the next step on your painful journey is a detachment from bodily comforts and desires. It begins subtly, no doubt, as you begin to remember hot tea and coffee as a quaint, outdated ritual of your old life. Your capacity and commitment to personal hygiene will slide, relieving you of the danger and damage of pride and vanity, which will only hold back your progress. Things start to gain perspective, as access to food and water become scarce, critical no doubt, to develop your burgeoning detachment from bodily comforts - our little masters know well. There is little time to prepare food, let alone actually consume it, between feeding, changing, burping, screaming and settling them back to sleep. You may overhear colleagues at work discuss delicious meals they’ve enjoyed at restaurants, cafes, bars, while your stomach mewls and you excuse yourself to snort ground coffee off the bench. You remember, faintly, the sensation of hot food and the flavours that accompany it, but know that your progress upon the ascetic path of parenting cannot abide such futile distractions.
Recovery, recuperation and memory retention become a thing of the past, as your little masters diligently work throughout the night to liberate your from a final crutch: REM sleep. Stripped of the need to eat and drink like your pathetic, undisciplined old self, your little Pai Mei will no doubt ensure that your can function, you will function, with a minimum of sleep. The strategy employed is incredibly effective, as they wake (often in rotations for those of us living with multiple masters), just as you’ve hit the point of sleep, but not before, and nowhere near the dangers of Stage 2 or Stage 3 sleep. Some have theorised that the masters’ waking is triggered by an acute awareness of the ‘hypnic jerk’ that often accompanies a parent’s transition into slumber, but we can never know for certain. All that we know, all you will know, is the uncanny sense of timing that marks the waking pattern of Pai Mei. One is of course allowed to sleep on the floor, beside the cot, with one’s arm reaching in to make contact and settle one’s master; but it’s a long way from a warm, familiar bed, which one may decide to sell to ensure that your progress isn’t compromised.
We cannot of course, neglect the natural shedding of social connection and comfort - a natural consequence of your devotion and diligence under such a master. There is little time for the fickle pleasures of friendship, a memory of your life before ascending the cold steps of fatherhood. Those who were your brothers, your comrades, may recognise the dishevelled, delirious man they encounter as something of the man they once knew, but your nonsensical rambling, body odour and habit of picking food off their plates will no doubt confirm that your days of social capacity, let alone interaction, are well behind you, muttering a silent eulogy as they watch you stumble back to the temple before sundown, to avoid a proverbial beating at the hands of your sage.
Before long, you’ll realise that months have passed under the tutelage of your Pai Mei. Suddenly, you’ll have celebrated their first birthday and find yourself marvelling at the man you see in the photo from the party: Bearded, emaciated, wearing clothes that are eight years old and having clearly abandoned the ridiculous custom known as the ‘haircut,’ the man is you, and somehow, a new you, remade, reforged at the hands of your sage. Stripped of the burdens of bodily comfort, belongings, pride and a will of one’s own, your transformation is complete, yet it’s only just begun.
You discover, in time, the road back to that middle ground, where your life is not altogether yours, but given gladly in the service of the little ones you’d lay it down for - in heartbeat. Your little Pai Mei will grow; their strategies will change, but you will be forever transformed by the strength of their will, their resolve and utter ruthlessness - to ensure that fatherhood is more than just an accident of fate - but an honour and a discipline all its own.
By Gaetano Carcarello