The most beautiful assumption

a thought.

I have the best mum in the world.

Since I left home at 20 and moved continents to figure out what the world had in store for me, that belief has only grown stronger.

After one of our weekly/daily chats the other day, separated by 15,000km of land and ocean, I was left with a feeling of deep gratitude and contentness for the rock that she has become in my life.

She is my sharpest advisor, my confidant, my role model and because she is someone that lives by such a strict and balanced moral code, she’s almost become a sort of ethereal figure in my mind when I think about decisions I make without her.

And on a normal tuesday, as I boarded the TFL, looked upon the countless people trading glances with me and then turning their gaze downwards, I thought, all these people on this train have mothers too. And they too, they too must believe, a hopeful majority at least, that their mothers are also the best mothers in the world.

Conflicting.

How could their mums also be the best mums in the world, if my mum already holds that position?

I came to the conclusion that ‘best’ in this context wasn’t a competition, but a deeply personal truth. Can many ‘bests’ exist simultaneously in our world?

Yes.

Some would say that my experience of my own mother doesn’t exist in a space where she can be compared with every other mother on earth. It exists in my own ‘lifeworld’, the private, rich, unique bubble I inhabit, and within that world, she is the central axis around which so much of my life has revolved around.

And that person on the train?

Also shaped by their unique circumstances and their mother may be too their central axis, or one of them.

These bests don’t collide because they don’t occupy the same objective plane. My mother is the best in the only world I can inhabit and decide upon, my own.

And it was then I took some time to reflect on this beautiful assumption.

Their mothers shape their choices, their values, their sense of right and wrong, just as mine shapes mine. These beliefs don’t cancel each other out because they aren’t competing claims. They come from lived experience, not comparison.

The contradiction only appears when we try to rank something that was never meant to be ranked.

Some truths don’t exist on a shared scale.

They are absolute only to the people who live them.

And theres a real beauty in that.