We're like ants with cell phones, filing in and out of schedules in wavy uncertain lines, following the leaders even if we don't know where they're off to. Destination to be announced, we hardly notice; we're programmed to tag along.
As school children draw outlines of leaves and learn their lessons well, I question the way we teach them, and to what end. I hope we can allow them to decide some things--politics and religion--for themselves within their own family traditions, or according to their own observations of life.
Is it possible any more? Could we respect others' decisions and beliefs? Do we expect them to respect our own?
Back in '85 I overheard a worn out, hungry musician, entering a homeless shelter in time for a bowl of soup, preach the following idea to his neighbor.
"We got to put a little oil on our relationships!" His long fingers clawed the air like dry limbs knocking wildly on a darkened window.
No one else heard--or at least no one reacted to--this declaration, but I've never forgotten it. The man kept on talking, but I walked straight into the kitchen with that idea on my mind: of lubricating the joints where I leave off and other people begin.
Boundaries, deferences, and certain social hesitances, grow between us like ancient hedgerows. . . preventing our personalities, privacy and dignity from blending uncontrollably with those of others. We need those boundaries in order to preserve what is ours, and to make our own paths strong, according to our own decisions.
But tolerance--allowing others to be themselves, to live among us peaceably, to grow and to love--represents most assuredly a sign of advanced civilization.
Can we manage to face ourselves as September wafts into the windows? To assess where and who we really are? To alter ourselves while we can still think on our own, in the midst of whirling propaganda so powerful it threatens to sweep to the skies all that we know?
"The unexamined life is not worth living," Socrates announced during his trial for heresy. He would have preferred to die rather than to give up his philosophy. Messages come to us from across centuries, across thousands of miles, across cultures and religions and traditions.
We're free to consider these notions, or to bat them away like flies. For such is our right. For the moment.
A very good comparison. Building a gate rather than a fence between us makes good sense. Most of us have been raised with moral and ethical divisions. Add those of education and financial differences and we grow further apart. In the end, we are one; no one person better than the other. The logic of the idea is sound, but to put it into practice calls for sacrifice. Therein lays the problem.
ReplyDeleteWow..."lubricating the joints where I leave off and other people begin"....a weighty thought.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking sometimes it takes no more than a genuine smile to start that process.
Thanks, Cowgirl!
Isn't it sad that I can't remember the last time I lubricated my joint? I've lubricated many joints, never really my own. Does that make me a catcher? If I were to go into a field of..wait for it... rye, would I be a catcher in that rye? I wonder. Sounds sticky.
ReplyDeleteChristian you make me LAUGH so hard!
ReplyDelete