So rather than face a fiery apocalypse of hate, a use my creepy stern dad voice and tell her:
“I need you to stop. You know what needs to be done, so. Do. It. NOW.”
By the time I reach the “ow” of “now” she’s in a high enough register to break all windows and summon all dogs for miles around us. She’s not arguing back, she’s just screaming a scream of dissatisfaction, and haphazardly-placed blame. Before I can even think a thought, I’ve yelled back, she’s yelled some more, aaaaaaaaand: scene.
Why? Why - knowing the rules of house, knowing the rules of not being a brat, of causing trouble, of screaming…Even so, she stretches her tantruming, exploring it’s parameters, writhing in feigned (and not-so-feigned) mental anguish and kicking sneaker - stains on our couch. She stomps and cries and screams and actively hates me. When I can get a word in edgewise I point out character flaws:
“You can never just let ONE night by without blowing up like this, it’s INSANE!”
“You can’t deal with the word “no”! You’re like a baby.”
I know: I’m an incredibly good parent. But that’s not (entirely) my point. Even knowing the rules, not to mention the fact that screaming, yelling and writhing are frowned upon by the adults in her life. The kid still argues for all those things vociferously, as if they were privileges that had been stripped by my dictatorial regime. She knows that all this bullshit is displeasing to us (and, I would think) taxing to her, and yet she does the whole dance, every time. Why ? Is her judgment so extremely impaired that ALL her choices are doomed to be - well - doomed?
For my part, the entirety of my interactions with my children resembles a highlight reel of bad decisions. I yell when I shouldn’t yell, and attempt soft coercion when it’s plain to see that only force will suffice. The only messages I send are mixed, and I never follow through with anything. I use profanity well within earshot of my children. I act disappointed in their inability to perform simple tasks, or control their body’s various emissions. I know it makes them sad, and I’m betting it’s not psyche-enhancing, and yet, I do it. A lot. Why? Isn’t a kind of insanity, participating in events and actions that I know will probably have negative effects on me and/or the ones I love?
In a word: Yes. Maybe not full-blown, climb-a-tower-with-a-.30.06 insanity, but insanity all the same, and frustrating: Understanding this thought process, and seeing it for what it is and does, means accepting - to a degree - that our minds and bodies are not entirely helmed by us. Or - at the very least - that there’s an aspect of ourselves that we’re not fully aware of, and that we can never fully control. To most people, that’s as good a representation of madness as any. Evidence from the world at large - however - would seem to indicate that this lack of control is probably more common than it’s description would make it seem. How many people have you known, over the course of your entire life up to this very sentence, have gained weight because they over-ate recklessly, or gotten a dui because they decided to drive even thought they knew - beyond any and all argument to the contrary - they were too fucked up to drive? We do it all the time, all of us. So who the fuck is in charge, and why do they hate us?
***
Since the first men crawled forth from the ooze to claim the firmament that seemed to be his birthright, mankind has been seeking better, faster, more complete ways of doing away with itself. The timeline of societal development and advance is almost entirely populated by things that - in the long run - are of little use to the race, and often the very fuel the feeds the various engines of our destruction. The invention of currency, specifically of promissory notes, the invention of the concept of time, and the invention and profligacy of global organized religions: Each one is an developmental tent-pole, discussed at length in text books the world over, and recognized by most as cultural milestones of the human race. Each one is a grave, un-resolvable misstep that may likely spell the end of us as a species or the end of the planet as a place that can support life in any sort of comfortable, sustainable form.
Money is worthless in all ways save one: It is a convenient and effective tool to separate and label vast populations of people. In all other ways, in all it’s myriad forms, the use of currency has no benefit or noteworthy result. Arbitrary and insubstantial, we might just as well seal the exchange of goods and services with clumps of mud, or a song-and-dance number. Gold is heavy and soft. It doesn’t taste good, and you can’t build a house out of it. If the world ended tomorrow, leaving only me, a neighbor with lots of gold, and a neighbor with lots of food, I know which neighbor I’d sack first. Our entire society is based on this ridiculous bauble. Entire kingdoms and societies have risen and fallen at the behest of the forces which control the most gold, and yet the actual metal has had little or no effect on anybody or anything just by itself. It’s been said that some ancient civilizations favored salt as a universal currency, and I wonder why - assuming this is actually true - we ever moved on from that. Salt does things. It makes things taste better and it melts inconvenient ice. Gold can make no such claims. Gold just sits there, glowing vaguely, and making lazy people seem worthless. I would’ve stuck with salt.
Unfortunately, there’s no analog to salt in discussions about time. Human beings are conceited, and so it makes perfect sense that we have chosen to label the constant change we see around us with one over-arching conceptual term, and then worry after that concept uselessly in the name of efficiency. There is no time. Time is just the things around us, being. These things degrade, some faster than others. There are great mysteries in this mechanism. The changes we perceive are often difficult to grasp. Some of them may well be unknowable to us as a species. I’m cool with that. I’m not cool with our lives being run according to other peoples perception of this constant reform and evolution. There are not 24 hours in a day. There are not 30 days in a month. There is only the moment you exist in now and possibly a few more moments like it. We should fill them as best we can, but fearing of them, and the sense of some great ticking as our fortunes (and potential fortunes) dwindle, seems wasteful.
Every week I go to church. I drag my kids along with me like my parents dragged me and just like I did then, my kids hate it. I know: It seems strange and possibly a tad redundant, to subject my children to things that I found - in my own childhood - to be detestable.
I have my reasons. that I persist. I want my kids to be active locally. On a practical level, I want the people in the town where we live to know my kids, and vice versa. I want my children to know what it means to express faith with others. In short, I want them to share in something. This way, I’ll be able to show them that faith and intolerance do not go hand in hand, and that a group of people who believe as one, are not automatically correct in that belief. I want them to know that there is no “us” and there is no “them”, that there is room for everybody to become just exactly what they need to be. I know: seems a long way to go just to school a child in social responsibility. I’m not so sure. We live in a world that teaches the opposite, every second of every day. We believe that education is right, so we all take part, we believe that our children are important, and so we all prioritize their needs, we feel that Islamic fundamentalism is wrong, and so we send armies to murder those who follow it. Us and them. It’s a disease, but it’s a disease that many people seem to want.
***
It sounds like drivel. It sounds worse than drivel. I can live with that. Most of the texts we hold dear today started out as drivel. They continue to sound like that, until - one day - they don‘t. Here on earth, truth is elusive. It’s context that determines all. Sometimes context just shifts, all by itself. Most times, however, context needs a push. A context that doesn’t involve money, a calendar, or organized religion will probably end up as the latter. Don’t mistake me though: it will come. Humans can correct mistakes they make as a species, and often do, when day-to-day reality of the establishment becomes untenable for enough of the right people.
Until then we just stagnate I guess. Yelling at our kids and eating too much, wondering who’s in charge and why they hate us.
