Being the youngest in a large family I was always on the run, being held up to someone else's ladder, someone else's ideas for how I was supposed to be. This continued for the rest of my life, even to this day, with family members "doing much better" than I am. A very tall brother who looks amazingly similar the epitome of a good son, I was always a disappointment on so many levels. Being a sensitive person and simply not the archetype of my brother, the doer, the worker, the father even.
So it goes to say that I heard the words "grow up" quite a bit. Why can't you be more like your brother? Why can't you do a better job at life? You are so talented what are you doing cooking? You must be lazy, or unmotivated, or something is wrong with your head? All the while not realizing that I was really going to be ok, I just had to get away from all the examples I was not. I miss my sister a lot these days and I think we were just the same in this gifted business, I would have loved to bring her this information out today. I think the very same factors of fitting into a box she couldn't imagine kept on shattering her psyche and toxicity of it all took her to that last step, that last drunk.
It is a serious business this growing up bit. I have had a heavy graduate level course over the last six years or so. So when I think back to those who would keep their perspective of me is some distant memory, which is many in my family since they seldom if ever speak to me. I have to start laughing, and when I look around the country and the people and their comments and attitudes, I have to start laughing. I noted it in the prior piece, that we don't teach coping skills, we don't teach people reason or logic, so a lot of those very same people that would tell me to grow up I laugh. One of the only things we teach anymore is expectations, and people, many of those who would have me "grow up" have done little of it themselves.
Resentments and spite, anger and all of the things I was always told not to do because I had to "grow up" is all I ever see anymore. A bunch of other people's children that never got the message or abandoned it for some belief or another. I see the resentments of good people poisoning them while they wish the other person ill. I see the spite in people's words and thoughts, including my own, that just ferment this stew into a hot mess even more. The anger and fear being used like Duraflame logs, being bought by the time slots, and stoked during peak times by the suited circus performers du jour.
Yes, this is a time of infants facing mortality, we did not grow past our primal stage, we did not reach any higher place on the circle of life. We have been a regressive species determined to undermine those things we simply do not know, for the artificial security of those things we think we do, those things that don't work.
So yes, at this point in my life and perceptions I can laugh, and laugh loudly at this display going on before me. I can laugh at the lessons that people attempt to teach their children, while all the while holding and using those very childish precepts in their belief systems. Acceptance of this, the side show circus going on before me would be ingenuous and fake at best. It is just a metaphor come to life on a huge scale, an analogy of the best of childish reactions. I really can understand that concept from Star Trek, that first directive, do not interfere with the natural progression of a planet or it's people. We are a prime example of giving primates too much to handle, the Planet of the Apes without the costumes seems to be right here, right now.
Yes, I sadly laugh, I sadly see those reaching, and I see those who believe they are when they are not. We simply don't care, not that that's the truth really, more like we just don't care enough... yet. Growing up is a real thing and there are fewer and fewer willing to go the distance, too afraid of the mirrors, and the reality that they just will not accept or see ever in their lifetimes. There are too many employed by Apathy Inc. trapped by the doors that will open if asked, the sound you hear is myself, laughing my ass off at those "grown up's" inside.
So it goes to say that I heard the words "grow up" quite a bit. Why can't you be more like your brother? Why can't you do a better job at life? You are so talented what are you doing cooking? You must be lazy, or unmotivated, or something is wrong with your head? All the while not realizing that I was really going to be ok, I just had to get away from all the examples I was not. I miss my sister a lot these days and I think we were just the same in this gifted business, I would have loved to bring her this information out today. I think the very same factors of fitting into a box she couldn't imagine kept on shattering her psyche and toxicity of it all took her to that last step, that last drunk.
It is a serious business this growing up bit. I have had a heavy graduate level course over the last six years or so. So when I think back to those who would keep their perspective of me is some distant memory, which is many in my family since they seldom if ever speak to me. I have to start laughing, and when I look around the country and the people and their comments and attitudes, I have to start laughing. I noted it in the prior piece, that we don't teach coping skills, we don't teach people reason or logic, so a lot of those very same people that would tell me to grow up I laugh. One of the only things we teach anymore is expectations, and people, many of those who would have me "grow up" have done little of it themselves.
Resentments and spite, anger and all of the things I was always told not to do because I had to "grow up" is all I ever see anymore. A bunch of other people's children that never got the message or abandoned it for some belief or another. I see the resentments of good people poisoning them while they wish the other person ill. I see the spite in people's words and thoughts, including my own, that just ferment this stew into a hot mess even more. The anger and fear being used like Duraflame logs, being bought by the time slots, and stoked during peak times by the suited circus performers du jour.
Yes, this is a time of infants facing mortality, we did not grow past our primal stage, we did not reach any higher place on the circle of life. We have been a regressive species determined to undermine those things we simply do not know, for the artificial security of those things we think we do, those things that don't work.
So yes, at this point in my life and perceptions I can laugh, and laugh loudly at this display going on before me. I can laugh at the lessons that people attempt to teach their children, while all the while holding and using those very childish precepts in their belief systems. Acceptance of this, the side show circus going on before me would be ingenuous and fake at best. It is just a metaphor come to life on a huge scale, an analogy of the best of childish reactions. I really can understand that concept from Star Trek, that first directive, do not interfere with the natural progression of a planet or it's people. We are a prime example of giving primates too much to handle, the Planet of the Apes without the costumes seems to be right here, right now.
Yes, I sadly laugh, I sadly see those reaching, and I see those who believe they are when they are not. We simply don't care, not that that's the truth really, more like we just don't care enough... yet. Growing up is a real thing and there are fewer and fewer willing to go the distance, too afraid of the mirrors, and the reality that they just will not accept or see ever in their lifetimes. There are too many employed by Apathy Inc. trapped by the doors that will open if asked, the sound you hear is myself, laughing my ass off at those "grown up's" inside.
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