Musings
From The Heart
An
Essay A Day For A Year
By
Roe
Day
4, Jan 4, 2012
Me,
Father Dum Dum
Greetings
and salutations everyone. I’m curious
what has been ringing in your head all day. I truly hope for your sake that
there hasn’t been anything, and that you and Buddha have been one with the
moment, because it’s a lot more relaxing than what I have been going through. I
haven’t been one with the moment at all. I have been thinking “they know what
they want, they know what they want, they know what they want” a zillion times,
and it is not even a good song to annoy me to oblivion, but my own line from yesterday’s essay. Help! So all I can think of doing is download it here
and get it out of my broken-record head.
Boy, am I lucky that you are here to help me. (Please don’t go away,
this one is really important!)
When you and I were little kids a
hundred years ago, we always knew what we wanted, do you remember? You said “ick!” to sautéed spinach and onions,
I remember. I said “oh no!” to taking out the trash out after dark, I remember. We both felt embarrassed when the guy kissed
the gal too mushy in the , before we got good at kissing mushy ourselves when
we grew up, do you remember? We always knew what we wanted.
When I was a tiny little guy (and I mean
tiny like before I could walk), I used to know stuff, and I mean a lot of
stuff. For example, too many times I
used to watch Dada rampage around saying angry things to the queen of the
universe (that was Mama), and I used to think, “uh oh, careful Dada, I just saw
Mama turn her head and squint at you, and that is a very, very scary and a real
bad thing, you better be nicer to her, or…….” And sure enough, my beloved
bull-in-Mama’s-china-shop Dad would go too far, and then would have to endure
the next month getting all his feathers plucked out without anesthesia one by
one. 14 years later she finally plucked out the one that holds his heart in
place. No one ever listened to me.
Every baby knows how to honor the dignity and value of
every living thing. Every baby knows
that hugs are the very things that make all the stars twinkle in the
night. Every baby knows that crying
is what we do when our hearts are unhappy, and every baby knows that if you
piss off Mama, then you don’t get as much breastie milk. “Come on you big
people!” I used to think. “This is not
so hard!” Boiled spinach and onions, dark
places with a hand full of rotting trash (monsters are attracted especially by
6 year old blond boys with a huge bag of smelly trash), and sticking your
tongue inside someone elses head, ick,
ick, ick, no, no, no. But all that is
like a birthday party compared to when a woman squints at you after you
offended her sense of worth. Run, run,
run.
Every child, every person, from the
moment of conception, knows exactly who they are, and what they want, and what
are the cardinal points of Love, honor, truth, dignity, justice, and lots of
other very simple things. When we were children we knew things. Modern little girls can dance around Wonder
Woman with their hands tied behind her back, because adult Wonder Woman has already
had most of her dignity and value chiseled out by a hundred unfortunate
scenes. Little boys don’t have to be big,
ugly and green, to break things when they get mad. Little boys still know that
devotion and hugs and crying, out of fear and disappointment, could humble any
hurt lion or mad mommy, not to mention soothe our fraternal brother’s hand off
that nuke button.
I want to know what happened to
everything we used to know my little brothers and sisters? What ever happened
to laughing at being silly, and wearing wacky clothing because we are so
beautiful. And liking everybody? What
happened to watching the world and shaking our heads when seemingly all
powerful adults did the stupidest things and wondering, “Are these big people
retarded? Everyone knows that!” And now
regretfully, I have become one of those big people that is so smart that, like
you, I fear for my literal life and
world and all life on it. Something is terribly wrong.
We say and do what our parents said and
did because their parents said and did it, etc.
I know, I know. Now we are big
and we have to guide the little ones to be just like us. Teach them to be open minded by forcing them
to eat icky things, teach them to be fearless by scaring the daylights out of
them, and teach them to honor and respect others by denigrating our own fellow
citizens right before their eyes.
When I was five, I used to watch my fellow 1
to 10 year olds, and I could still feel the spark still alive, I could feel
their wisdom of fun and play and hugs and compassion and empathy, not to
mention tolerance and humility and acceptance.
Forgiveness was like breathing, crying was like, well… of all the silly
ideas, crying. And hope was irrefutably king of the kiddy mount. I can!,
and, I will!, and I’ll never
never, never give up!, were the mantras of every little one.
And so I devised a really good “little Roe at
5” scheme with my
I-M-A-G-I-N-A-T-I-O-N, something the big dum-dums seemed to
have misplaced. I dreamed: “You awesome and great Mommy and Daddy people that are messing
up the most obvious things, please read this, and I wrote giant letters in the sky
in my turquoise tri-plane that would have made the Red Baron envious:
WE LITTLE PEOPLE
ALREADY KNOW EXACTLY WHAT WE WANT!
WE KIDS ALREADY
KNOW WHAT TO DO!
WE ARE ALREADY US!
HELP US STAY ALIVE!
FEED US YUMMY THINGS! (OK HEALTHY
YUMMY THINGS!)
LOVE US AND ACCEPT US AND APPROVE OF US JUST AS WE ARE!
(NOT AS YOU WANT US TO BE)
THAT’S IT!
WE CAN DO COOL SHIT IF YOU JUST GIVE US A
CHANCE!
(The last one was my
favorite one since I always got in really bad trouble for saying shit. Well to
prove a point 40 something years later……. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, and
many, many more).
So here is a very small list
of some very fun essays to come this year:
Your child does not belong to you. Your child belongs to life and chose you out
of many billions of souls to be her tour guide in our world.
Your child does not need your help to be him. No less
than you needed help to be you (before you were forced to forget that).
You cannot educate your beautiful guest. You can only
demonstrate your own education and she will value your effort and choose her
own.
You cannot teach the little soul that co-habits your
house. But you can exchange talents as equals, wonderful talents for wonderful
talents.
And many. many more.
The little friends that look kinda like
you and temporarily live in your house will someday stand over your tombstone
with grateful tears, and read your legacy aloud to hords of cheering people:
“Here lie Mama and Dada. (Dada finally
figured out that Mama has to come first) The greatest kid trusting Earth guides
in the universe! They set the greatest
example for us of how to be great themselves, so we could choose our own
awesome way. We’ve got the future covered Mom and Dad, thanks!”
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
No comments:
Post a Comment