Honor Thy Parents?
I’m reading A.J. Jacobs’ book, “The Year of Living Biblically” (which I recommend), and I have to interject something.
I’m at the part where A.J.’s aunt Kate witnesses his son, Jasper calling him “A.J.”. She disapprovingly remarks, “Children aren’t supposed to use their parents’ first names. It’s disrespectful.”
A.J. writes:
“She’s probably right; in biblical times, there was no such thing as an informal, I’m-friends-with-my-kid father. Without me knowing it, Jasper was violating the ‘honor your parents’ commandment.”
Bla. I disagree. I mean, maybe he is one of those “I want to be my kid’s friend even if it works to his potential detriment because really I’m just afraid to use discipline” pansy-type fathers, I don’t know. But just being on a first-name basis with your kid doesn’t automatically mean that’s the case. Nor does a kid calling his parents by their first names show disrespect.
If anything, you honor your parents more by calling them by their first names — by acknowledging them as individuals with complex identities, histories, hopes and dreams of their own, not just the ones centered around you. Calling them ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’ exclusively is reducing them to only the role they play in relation to you, just as if they were to call you ‘Son’ or ‘Daughter’ exclusively.
Words are hypnotic. You are lulling each other into the familiar comfort of habitual roles and behavior patterns. You are one-dimensionalizing each other, type-casting each other. You are reinforcing limits around your relationships (some of which, I realize, are there for good reason, but not all) and the identities of each individual involved.
Maybe it has something to do with my weird beliefs which I won’t go into, but which include reincarnation (sort of). I don’t think my biological parents ‘created’ me any more than I created them. We came together to help each other out and maybe because we are friends at another level. Or enemies. Maybe they were my kids last time. That would explain a lot. Who knows, but we’re all sovereign beings.
You don’t have to believe in reincarnation (even sort of) to realize that people are not born blank slates and then merely molded by their earthly creators. Parents are the first and strongest influences on the child’s ego, but we’re more than our egos, and nobody owns anybody, and there’s more to the picture. I can’t prove that but I know it.
And as a parent, placed in such a position of influence, I would want to help instill a strong sense of sovereignty and independence in the developing ego I’ve been entrusted with, not dependency (or codependency — parents can get awfully attached to the parent-child dynamic, too, and that’s not good for anybody).
That said, I address my parents by the standard, socially acceptable labels. It’s how they grew up, it’s how I grew up, it’s habit, it’s what they want to be called. Of course now my husband’s Mom wants me to call her ‘mom’ too, which I do when I remember to, though reluctantly (it feels really weird to me), out of respect for her wishes if not for her individuality, or mine.
Reinforcing role-relationships… and inequalities within them. Most people don’t even think about this, so I don’t hold it against anybody. I’m just sayin’. Being on a first-name basis signifies equality and mutual respect. It reminds both involved that even if you’re playing different roles in relation to each other, they are just roles and you are not those roles, you’re both just people.
My kid(s) will call me Brooke. And yeah, maybe sometimes I’ll have them call me ‘Our Lord’, like on Tuesdays or something. But I’ll let them pick special titles they want to be called sometimes, too. I want them to develop warped senses of humor, after all.
Coming up next!
(or whenever I feel like it!)
(probably never.)
Psychological Experimentation On Your Child: How to Get the Most Personal Amusement While Doing the Least Possible Damage to Your Child’s Fragile Psyche.
Carving Out New Grooves In My Brain
[Another automatic-writing-majigg from sometime last week. I don’t know, should I be dating these things? Does anyone care? I don’t think I do.]
[…] I try and I still can’t feel what you’re saying, though I can see it clear as day. i hear it like a bell ringing empty of love, devoid of depth. what heartless place do you speak from? cold and calculating, i respect you but go away. don’t interfere here ever again. i have seen both paths, the cold, dark, barren one and the warm, breezy, flourishing golden path of the heart. you know i have to choose the heart now, because i’ve been down the other way, farther than i like to admit. i had a bit of a back-treck to make for awhile. it was more trecherous and yet more joyous on the way back, if you could call it joyous? less devoid of joy. there was a hope. there was a sense of increasing warmth. the return was a return to my humanity. i mistook the path of cold and dark for the path toward god. and I was not wrong. but i was not right. and this path of the heart, it’s the one i desire now, but i’m wise enough despite it all to wait and listen before making my final move. i will not be the pendulum swinging from one way to the other, one falsehood to the other, one lie to another, endlessly. that’s been done to death. i will no longer engage in the poet wars. i will be the free poet who doesn’t call herself poet, because she’s more than that. i love you i love you i love you, you ought to know this. i couldnt say it before, but now, the path of the heart is in sight and i can love you today. but don’t take it the wrong way.
i’ve got a better choice: i will walk between the two paths. it is a high ridge which seperates and connects them. i will walk this nonpath to find the place where they come together again at the other end. but wait, here I am , at the fork in the road, the fork in the road is the destination. but it is a place of indecision so how can that be? it is the place where both connect but yet they lead somewhere — or do they lead backwards into ignorance and duality? it’s like the way we’re born — we are born at the destination, but we do not know what it means until we venture away from it. to reach your destination is to return home, but to face the other way, away from the split, with duality behind you and freedom in front. are we all looking the wrong way? freedom has no paths. it is open and clear, it is interconnected at every point. things are the way they are. one thing does not have to negate another. but you must then make a choice in every second, not between two distinct and narrow paths, paths that lead you, so that you do not lead yourself. no. here, you lead yourself. every direction is open. every step is a conscious and autonomous decision you make in freedom. and it is lonely here. each path in the backwards realm of duality is at least not a lonely one. each thinks it is the path less traveled, but each mistakes itself for the true path less traveled — the path of freedom — actual real freedom — which is no path at all — which is where every path leads, when you are walking your path in the right direction — home. but everyone is walking in the wrong direction, going further and further and further into their narrow tunnel and further away from truth. wrong, though, is the wrong word. lessons can be learned in every place, of course, and there are paths for those who need paths. when they need freedom (and are ready for it), they will know which direction to go.
I must stop concerning myself about paths and directions and simply follow my own compass where it leads. i am hesitant and reserved. i feel uncreative and ignorant. i want so badly to stop writing this, to hide in distraction, to escape facing my limited abilities. i am pushing through a tangled web of knots in my stomach and carving out new grooves in my brain. but they will be easier to traverse the next time. i will be easier to be with the next time.
my cat reassures me with a head butt that i’m on the right track. it is a head butt of encouragement and love.
Metaphor Quality May Vary
[from a semi-automatic writing session the other day]…
[…] it could be said that our choices rest soley on the quality and kinds of metaphors we are basing our choices upon. what if there were a way to filter out all but the best metaphors? — even to feed the good ones into a computer (or our fucking minds!) and have it test out and spit out the resulting lives or choices + consequences that would arise from each metaphor, and every kind of combination of metaphor — we’d choose the results most desirable to us personally — down to specifics — then the computer would generate some kind of detailed chart of the beliefs + values + metaphors and combination of those that would, if adopted (say, via some good hypnosis based on the chart) give us the results we are after. I guess that would be too easy, though, and boring… because what then?
WELL — lets not be too hasty to toss this out — if we made sure that the results we were after were open-ended — that they’d only up a world of even more fulfilling and challenging avenues into the future — then “what then?” could be met with some pretty AWESOME ANSWERS.
I’ll toss that into the universe’s future-forming algorhithmic thingy and hopefully some qualified super-intelligent entity will pick it up and roll with it […]
More Than 7 Good Things (A Picture Show by the Brooke)
Oh my goodness, I’ve been tagged by a ‘blog meme’! I feel so internetty. Gyrus, fellow internetter and friend of the show has tagged me. He seemed embarassed (”I don’t normally do this sort of thing…”), but I guess these things are usually quite lame, as in “list your top ten favorite kinds of bunny!” But I agree that this one’s good, as opposed to lame, so I accept and here is my response:
The challenge is to list ‘7 Positive Things‘. It must contain no traces of negativity, no sneaky inversions of things I don’t like - just seven things about which I can truthfully say, “I am all for this.”
I’ve decided to do it in the form of a picture show! I’ve also decided to go over 7 things if I feel like it (which it turns out I do), because I’m a renegade who plays by her own rules.
(Tag, you’re it).
* GOOD * T H I N G S * P I C T U R E * S H O W ! *
(I am all for these things and I approve these photos).
Sweet adorable pets (ie: my cats, Puffy & Neko).
Making art! (ie: mixed media collage, yum!)
Splicin’ sounds and sexy sentence structures.
Nature (especially being out in it).
My cozy bedroom studio.
Wisdom. Gradual, daily change for the better. Candles.
Improvitaping! Courage. Resolve. Divination (via cootie catcher). Jello. Hollow Earth radio. Supernatural things. Making things out of magic.
Crazy friends and high fives.
Night-time walks in snowy silence.
Juggling. Music. The Magical Approach. A life of one’s own design.
A healthy diet of mad wisdom, religious poetry and different perspectives.
Reverence for life.
An irreverent sense of humor (especially about yourself and your ‘art’).
Also, touques with dangly things.
Demetri Martin = Comedic Genius
By “comedic genius” I don’t merely mean he’s a genius at comedy. I mean he’s a genius who is also comedic. I wouldn’t normally post something just because I find it funny, but I make exceptions for geniuses and artists. Demetri Martin in his BBC special, “If I,” is just brilliant on all counts. I’ve never seen anything like it, especially from a comedian. Anyway, he’s my new favorite.
And I found “If I” on the YouTubes! So here: