I was sitting in the compound of the Primary School on a visitors’ day. The whole campus was a festival of joy: children meeting their parents and relatives while the others frisked about, playing games. There were kids enjoying the caper and tumble of the see-saw, some others shrieking delightedly on a swing– the entire scene looked like a fairyland. I could see a couple of teachers walking around, keeping a watch on the children. Suddenly I discovered an interesting scene. A boy, barely in the second standard, was standing a few feet from me, rubbing his eyes, and sobbing. An older boy came up to him, and asked him why he was sobbing. One hand still rubbing his eyes, he pointed out what was happening a little distance from him. A teacher was gently reprimanding a couple of children. Non-plussed, the older boy asked, “What? Why are you crying?” “Teacher is scolding them,” he replied. “She is scolding them, not you. Why do you cry? “They are my friends, my class,” the boy replied, whimpering. The older boy did not know what to say. Then the scene changed. The teacher lifted one of the boys, a tiny, cute-looking chap, and carried him on her shoulder. Surely, she did not like to draw tears from his eyes. The boy who was crying until now suddenly leapt up jubilantly. Bewildered at this unexpected change, the other boy asked him, “Hey, what happened? He's jumping in joy!” “See, ma’m is loving my friend, she is carrying him.” He jumped a few steps, and ran away. I was not only speechless, but stupefied too! What an absolute identification with another’s tears and smiles! ‘Love is a forgetting’. I did not really understand how love can be a forgetting. Who forgets what? How can that be love? Now, God in His great kindness was showing me what is forgetting. It is forgetting oneself, forgetting one’s separateness, and identifying one’s self with the other, the object of love. This boy had so identified with his friend’s tears and smiles that he forgot he was not being scolded or being loved, yet he experienced both. It was perfect self-effacement, , death of ego. Love is egolessness, and ego is lovelessnesss. ‘‘True love is when I live in the beloved, when I forget myself in the beloved; when a river jumps into the sea and forgets its separate identity in the identity of the sea’.
