An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 15, January 15, 2012
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“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” Well, you can lead a Roe to school, but you can’t make it learn. I am one stubborn “it”, and I routinely go into catatonic hard drive crash when anyone or anything puts a lead rope on me and walks me down to the “water”. I am so stubbornly arrogant that I still maintain that everything I ever learned I knew before I was conceived. I remember distinctly the first time a sautéed bell pepper hit my tongue and how I gagged from the tips of my toes right out onto my mommy’s face. I knew that those slimy things disgusted me even before daddy’s sperm wiggled into mommy’s egg. I also knew from the bottom of my eternal celestial heart that scowling at and ranting at and scaring your tiny helpless baby when it gags and spits yuchy green slimy things on you is even worse than green peppers. I may have looked helpless, but that was already the 143rd time that I doubted and questioned the ability of mommy to cook or mother. And you still can’t lead me to green peppers or mothers that are anything but loving.
Just like all infants, children and people, you cannot teach me or you. There is no such thing as teaching or teachers. When I get to be king for a day someday I’m going to hurry and abolish green peppers and teachers and teaching and lead ropes from the whole universe. On that day I’m also going to do a lot of other fun things, but green peppers are very, very dead. They are partly in so much trouble for just being yucky, but the concept went viral when mommy and daddy from old post war Germany followed the age old custom of forcing me to eat everything on my plate, to teach me values and good manners. I’m still harboring a green pepper grudge against mommy and daddy, and they are damn lucky that I don’t abolish them too from the universe for forcing ME to do or endure anything at all that my heart knows is wrong.
Teachers and parents aren’t teachers or parents at all, they are merely temporary tour guides to show us little ones all the things they have learned themselves. That is potentially a sad and scary thought I used to think as a little guy, and still do, since mommy and daddy were forced to eat yucky things, forced to endure “teachers”, and forced to accept their lead ropes to the point of putting one on me. I say temporary because I will be here long after you will mommy and daddy, and I feel every day how temporary I am as I behold the little geniuses I am lucky enough to tour guide myself.
Every little person has a heart, and every heart knows exactly what it wants all the time, what it will do all the time, and what is right and beautiful and fair and just and loving, all the time. Every heart wants to be free, every heart wants to be seen and accepted and approved of and loved. Every new young heart is vastly purer and healthier than the big people with the lead ropes around their necks could ever be. And every new young heart is ready and willing to share all the forgotten secrets of the love and joy that was lost by the big people growing up in a very scary old world.
Every heart already knows everything it needs to know, since before conception. All the core tenets of justice and fairness and equality and kindness and love are ingrained into all hearts from the moment that the universe leaped onto consciousness, which was the first moment of existence a very long, long time ago.
Perhaps I am a rare one, but I carefully committed every boo boo my two parents made to unforgettable stone, whenever this boo boo crossed my own true values. When I was scowled at and ranted at for eating every cookie in the house, I earmarked that they were justly right about my abuse of cookies and let it go, but I committed to stone so I wouldn’t forget the sting of a wooden german cooking spoon on my back side. Too many cookies not good, beating a child with rage, bad. Terrible tour guide transgression number 21,216.
My heart told me that you cannot force a heart unfairly, for the heart knows. You cannot teach, you can only learn. The best that the world ever got out of me was a stubborn child standing in front of the water with the lead rope around my neck, green pepper and cookie stains on my face, welts on my backside, and enough resentment to match the rest of my fellow children now all grown up and running the world. Once again, what a sad and scary thought.
I like tour guides that I admire. I like tour guides that I respect. I like tour guides that I, well… like. I like tour guides that make me laugh and are funny. I like tour guides that remember how hard it is as a loving child growing up in a world filled with resentful big people all trying to teach you how great the lead rope around your neck is. I like tour guides that recognize what a shambles our world is in, and that they may not know much. I like tour guides that see me and listen to me and approve of me and accept me as a really good learner. As a matter of fact I learned a lot better and faster before everyone began trying to teach me how to learn. I really like tour guides that don’t talk much, but instead live their life by example so I can emulate the parts that my heart likes, and ignore the rest.
I really like the tour guides that appeal to my formidable intelligence, that trust my clear and strong heart, and especially tour guides that feel themselves to be only older than me, but never superior. I like tour guides that go to the water themselves, that take off their own old world lead ropes, that dive into the water to swim and frolic, that wave peanut butter and chocolate sandwiches in the air, and drink deeply of their own well lived water before inviting me to join. I especially like tour guides that understand me that I may not be ready to join yet, and who come and sit with me on the shore since I might be afraid or lonely.
I like tour guides like you and me who invented the idea that all little learners like me and you can dial 911 when our hearts tell us that something is very wrong and we need help. I like the tour guides that pick up on the other end to tell us that “help is on the way”, and that will remind mommy and daddy that forcing your child to eat green peppers is bad, and but beating them with wooden spoons is a custom of the old resentful world that is no longer allowed.
I like tour guides like you and me who now listen to these incredibly visionary little loving children like yours and mine who are clear to point out that we big tour guides have all messed up our world terribly, and that it might be that everyone is forcing everyone to teach everyone to repeat everything in the old world.
I can just see the headlines now: “The world is saved! Mommy and Daddy tour guides across the world have outlawed green peppers and teaching old tired tricks to little stubborn its!”
See you tomorrow tour guides.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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