The Unseen
Many times, when I was a kid, people didn't see how aware I was. I am sure this has been the experience of many of you. Didn't I do a post on childhood some time back? Yeah, so adults, especially people who know you, and most especially family, simply underestimate you, and have you in a box that is easy for them to understand. But most kids are already adults, inside, to some degree. It's wrong to regard children as some kind of separate, pet species. For one thing, they may eat you when you are old.
My mother had a younger boy - two years younger than me - and we are all on the bed, rolling around a little. At one point, I scooted my leg around, perfectly aware of what I was doing - and of where everyone was - and that I was not going to hit anyone with my foot. But all of the sudden, new mother came down on me for almost gashing little brother's head open with my iron fortified NAZI jack-heeled boot. Like I was some kind of idiot. Because this was easier for my mother to understand than the idea that I was pretty damn aware, intelligent and, dare I say it, grown-up. Ever since then, whatever happened, in their heads, was regarded as some great crime I had committed. Indeed, I got some email or card from that brother fairly recently, telling me that I was the person who almost killed him but, implying, I'm still his brother. Oh, thanks.
On the other hand, he wrote on the wall and blamed it on me. Which is opposite of what I did. The only thing these two instances had in common? They were both used to benefit my brother, friend to the adults. Which happened a lot.
And this is a sort of psychopath thing to do. Like the guy downstairs. Bangs on the walls over absolutely nothing - except that he hates me because I am me and he is not - and when I call the police on him, he is shouting all about how everything is my fault, and my horrible dog doesn't even tags, and any other lie he can think of. Why would I, someone with a serious illness, be the one to try to provoke trouble and stress in the house? There are people who just DO this shit, especially around me. Illness or not, you can see why I don't want to be around people, especially in this region.
They are all out for drama so they can make their bullshit claims. And they all buy into this system of mores, they all agree with each other on it, they all fight and sometimes succeed in gaining power in it, and they project onto others all the BS and lies that they are guilty of. And the reason why they amplify this towards me is because I AM NOT PART OF IT! But they cannot see this, as many adults cannot see the sense in a child. Well, they are all adolescents in the "Lord of the Flies" sense, which is the whole problem. People can see a child because they are JEALOUS and VINDICTIVE. Well, there may be other reasons, as well.
So, it's my 12th birthday, l or some such. And my dear mother made me white chicken breast, etc., which I liked. A cake. And they took videos, of me being all happy and wonderful. I'm glad I looked that way, because it made my mother happy. But I wasn't happy. There were problems going on, those days, that people were not seeing - and now they don't even remember them. (That's what money is good for, btw. Supporting lies, erasing history, shifting blame, etc.)
But, no, I was ACTING. I was awkward and uncomfortable in my family. So, the time my sister called down the stairs to my mother, looking for detergent, "Where's the thrill or the joy?" It was very easy for me to make a joke out of that. They called it me being funny, but I called it me being AWARE. Unseen and aware.
So, it was also easy for me to become a star in high-school theatre - because, like a Jew, I was an outsider, always observing, now acting. Both seeing the BS and trying to live in it with self-respect.
Anyway, they put a video clip of me sitting at the table, all happy over my cake, and what not. To watch at my mother's wake. They even slowed it down to maximise sentimentality. And they loved that, and they loved me, which is fine, and I don't blame them. I don't understand it, but I don't blame them.
But saw that clip, and knew that what was really going on was that boy was in pain, but he was big enough, man enough, to let others have his day. You don't get paid for that and you never will.
I am a young boy, alone at home with my mother. Maybe she dropped a pan in the kitchen that day, and I ran in to see if she was all right. After the first time, I would do that just because I knew it made her happy. And I am she deliberately dropped a pan or two just to see me run in. Well, whatever went on that day, I knew my mother was sad about something. She would normally sing while washing dishes, etc., just as I do now, (although I usually whistle so I don't get arrested or something). But, today, she was silent. Sad things had happened. My father had started drinking. My older brother was failing at some new enterprise. Money. America. Missing the old country. And so forth.
Well, I was telling my mother something I had seen or done outside. Even though I was left alone most of the time, which should have been pretty boring. I was often pretty bored, and this got worse and worse as the years went on. But I didn't have to tell her anything. I just meant to cheer her up. By calling her attention to things that are being taken for granted. To the Unseen. And I finished by saying, "Isn't life wonderful?!"
She always remembered that. I think that's when I understood the power of marketting. Catch-phrases, you know. To make people see things they don't see, whether they are there or not. She took a few other of my phrases to her grave, as well, like, "I love you and God does, too." Siblings actually pilfered this phrase, to gain parental love. Pffft.
Along came a movie that largely encapsulated my childish philosophy of maintaining hope and innocence through adversity, which my family later saw, but you know, I don't think they ever make the connexion. It's like a genetic programme to never give me credit in their minds, although they may love me in a very reminiscent way, which is Irish, I guess. The movie was, "Life Is Beautiful"...
I spent a lot of my boyhood acting silly like Benigni in this film. But, "silly," in Scot/Irish ethics, is not going to win any wars. Silly won't build the next great power generator. Silly won't pay the bills, feed people in China, or go to the moon. When my father scoffed at meh, "Don't be SILLehhhh!" (Eat yerrr meat!") I didn't know what he meant. I didn't know what I had done that was wrong. I was just being me. Having fun with being aware.
It became a familiar conspiracy. Being chided for being silly, by siblings now kissing up to adults. Losing their religion awareness. But they'd do something silly, and it was fine, an oddity passing by. And they had kids, who did very silly things, and they would just sit their, as adults, smiling at them together. And I was like, "I went though MY ENTIRE LIFE being told there was something wrong with anything I did, and now it's a field day for your kids?!"
Which reminds me. What do these things have in common? Not morality or consistency. What they have in common is that they benefit the jerks. That's what double standards are for.
But, I am a wise individual. I know that most people strive for silliness like they hunger for Nirvana. It's just that they are too wrapped up in themselves and social strictures to dare take the risk of being the first silly person in the room. (Unless it's the jerk with the big mouth who everyone cower-tows to, which isn't silliness, it is boorish bullying).
Silliness is like freedom. Everyone wants it, but they just don't get it. And they hate the people who are free. Which becomes the focus, creating a very anti-free society, ultimately. But, we have structures, institutions, exchanges, manners, and other means by which people feel they can work towards freedom, and silliness. Some spend their whole lives obsessing over these structures and forgetting about the goal. Which is, for labour, to rest and receive. Which is, for the day's activity, to sleep and dream. Which is, for life, to be happy and end up in some kind of heaven. Where life is beautiful ALL the time.
But, when someone sees someone they don't like being happy, then that person must be cheating, right? It is those who feel least free who rush to take away the freedom of those they see as being not on their side. And it the unsilly who will allow silliness amongst their friends, but do everything they can to destroy it in their enemies. It's all relative to politics. And the great dreams and ideals we wished for as children? They can tend to fight their way into extinction in a politically perverse world. Adolescents growing into this world may play into these political games, and then die, really accomplishing nothing, in the big picture.
Which is why the saints preach forgiveness, and all that stuff (which, to some, holds as much water as silliness). Forgiveness is a way of turning things around, bit by bit. So are the virtues of gratitude, grace and humility. But it won't work if it's just platitudes. It can only work if it is real in the system. But that's a whole nuther discussion.
When you have people who refuse to see the awareness in you, they are either going to have to change, or you are going to keep going through hoops to try to satisfy them. If they can't forgive - in other word, allow you to walk ahead without blame - then you are really just reinforcing their game. And, sometimes, the only way YOU can forgive THEM is by breaking free of that game. If you think life is beautiful, and they refuse to let you express that, as you, then business do you have being in their hold? What's the point of it? The system isn't changing favorably for you. 'What is more, that is not what you are here for.' We're all put here to follow our own will, our own dream, and our own leisure. Being unaware of this is a political act. Being unaware gives over good soil to the seeds of injustice.
Everybody knows this. Everybody feels this. Everybody wants this. Some don't know how to advance in the direction of their dreams, at the moment. Some may have communication problems. Some may be children daunted by abuse, unable to open up even to themselves. Some may be battered and broken and all alone. But everybody wants to try - or to learn how to try. And, in the process, some of them may be the biggest bastards and criminals on the planet. But the fact remains, everyone wants to be more aware. More in touch. More themselves. That is the call of existence - the trick it plays to convince you to keep on living. Keep on hoping. Keep on believing there is a reason for you.
Viktor Frankl showed, that even if reduced to skin and bones in ghastly NAZI concentration camps, how deep is this drive - so deep that the most abused and deprived prisoners would push on, day after day, maintaining hop despite all hope. And many of them lived to see the Allied troops come in and finally free them. They held out so super-humanly, because they INSISTED that life is beautiful! And that was the point of the movie. Ironically, it was these prisoners who thereby proved themselves the true supermen.
The triumph of the Unseen.
In the end, it is that silly willy within us that saves the day. It's why we build the great power generators. It's why we go to the moon. It's why we pay the bills. The entire economy of the world is premised upon people making their choices, having their desires, and trying to survive. This is why Western Culture, upholding the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, can be a hopeful one. If it remembers and keeps holy the unseen awareness of others, it can be a transcendent culture. It's not easy, but it can try.
But, you get a world fighting its way towards war, where people are on one side or the other, and rules and manners are breaking down, the whole point seems to become mass denial of our inner humanity. Like a death cult.
I am sitting at the table, apparently happy as a hobbit, recorded for posterity, unhappy - but I am pushing on. I am grateful. I am generous. I am humble. It's like a lifetime of giving up the ghost. Offerings to the ducks. What do I get back? People accusing me of their own guilt? People cashing in on me for their own glory? People misrepresenting me? Chiding me for the silliness they wish they could claim? The freedom they think they see, and so envy? The box they put me in as a child, so they could comfort themselves? It's a lot of crap.
But, most of it is just people trying. Not knowing. Wanting. Passing time. And hoping. Everyone wants to see that life is beautiful. Some are burdened with showing that to them. Leaders of the heart. They make money from it. They may make friends. Or they may pass out of this Earth alone and unseen. Like so many trillions of other creatures. We trod upon every day.
But they were never unseen.
You were never unseen.
Life, itself, is observation, shared.
Acknowledged and ready to begin again.
Now my brother has a son who acts like Benigni.
"Benigni" - Italian for, "benign."
All is forgiven.
LJ credit goes to Arrctic - for the movie part.
"The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence." - Nikola Tesla.
My mother had a younger boy - two years younger than me - and we are all on the bed, rolling around a little. At one point, I scooted my leg around, perfectly aware of what I was doing - and of where everyone was - and that I was not going to hit anyone with my foot. But all of the sudden, new mother came down on me for almost gashing little brother's head open with my iron fortified NAZI jack-heeled boot. Like I was some kind of idiot. Because this was easier for my mother to understand than the idea that I was pretty damn aware, intelligent and, dare I say it, grown-up. Ever since then, whatever happened, in their heads, was regarded as some great crime I had committed. Indeed, I got some email or card from that brother fairly recently, telling me that I was the person who almost killed him but, implying, I'm still his brother. Oh, thanks.
On the other hand, he wrote on the wall and blamed it on me. Which is opposite of what I did. The only thing these two instances had in common? They were both used to benefit my brother, friend to the adults. Which happened a lot.
And this is a sort of psychopath thing to do. Like the guy downstairs. Bangs on the walls over absolutely nothing - except that he hates me because I am me and he is not - and when I call the police on him, he is shouting all about how everything is my fault, and my horrible dog doesn't even tags, and any other lie he can think of. Why would I, someone with a serious illness, be the one to try to provoke trouble and stress in the house? There are people who just DO this shit, especially around me. Illness or not, you can see why I don't want to be around people, especially in this region.
They are all out for drama so they can make their bullshit claims. And they all buy into this system of mores, they all agree with each other on it, they all fight and sometimes succeed in gaining power in it, and they project onto others all the BS and lies that they are guilty of. And the reason why they amplify this towards me is because I AM NOT PART OF IT! But they cannot see this, as many adults cannot see the sense in a child. Well, they are all adolescents in the "Lord of the Flies" sense, which is the whole problem. People can see a child because they are JEALOUS and VINDICTIVE. Well, there may be other reasons, as well.
So, it's my 12th birthday, l or some such. And my dear mother made me white chicken breast, etc., which I liked. A cake. And they took videos, of me being all happy and wonderful. I'm glad I looked that way, because it made my mother happy. But I wasn't happy. There were problems going on, those days, that people were not seeing - and now they don't even remember them. (That's what money is good for, btw. Supporting lies, erasing history, shifting blame, etc.)
But, no, I was ACTING. I was awkward and uncomfortable in my family. So, the time my sister called down the stairs to my mother, looking for detergent, "Where's the thrill or the joy?" It was very easy for me to make a joke out of that. They called it me being funny, but I called it me being AWARE. Unseen and aware.
So, it was also easy for me to become a star in high-school theatre - because, like a Jew, I was an outsider, always observing, now acting. Both seeing the BS and trying to live in it with self-respect.
Anyway, they put a video clip of me sitting at the table, all happy over my cake, and what not. To watch at my mother's wake. They even slowed it down to maximise sentimentality. And they loved that, and they loved me, which is fine, and I don't blame them. I don't understand it, but I don't blame them.
But saw that clip, and knew that what was really going on was that boy was in pain, but he was big enough, man enough, to let others have his day. You don't get paid for that and you never will.
I am a young boy, alone at home with my mother. Maybe she dropped a pan in the kitchen that day, and I ran in to see if she was all right. After the first time, I would do that just because I knew it made her happy. And I am she deliberately dropped a pan or two just to see me run in. Well, whatever went on that day, I knew my mother was sad about something. She would normally sing while washing dishes, etc., just as I do now, (although I usually whistle so I don't get arrested or something). But, today, she was silent. Sad things had happened. My father had started drinking. My older brother was failing at some new enterprise. Money. America. Missing the old country. And so forth.
Well, I was telling my mother something I had seen or done outside. Even though I was left alone most of the time, which should have been pretty boring. I was often pretty bored, and this got worse and worse as the years went on. But I didn't have to tell her anything. I just meant to cheer her up. By calling her attention to things that are being taken for granted. To the Unseen. And I finished by saying, "Isn't life wonderful?!"
She always remembered that. I think that's when I understood the power of marketting. Catch-phrases, you know. To make people see things they don't see, whether they are there or not. She took a few other of my phrases to her grave, as well, like, "I love you and God does, too." Siblings actually pilfered this phrase, to gain parental love. Pffft.
Along came a movie that largely encapsulated my childish philosophy of maintaining hope and innocence through adversity, which my family later saw, but you know, I don't think they ever make the connexion. It's like a genetic programme to never give me credit in their minds, although they may love me in a very reminiscent way, which is Irish, I guess. The movie was, "Life Is Beautiful"...
I spent a lot of my boyhood acting silly like Benigni in this film. But, "silly," in Scot/Irish ethics, is not going to win any wars. Silly won't build the next great power generator. Silly won't pay the bills, feed people in China, or go to the moon. When my father scoffed at meh, "Don't be SILLehhhh!" (Eat yerrr meat!") I didn't know what he meant. I didn't know what I had done that was wrong. I was just being me. Having fun with being aware.
It became a familiar conspiracy. Being chided for being silly, by siblings now kissing up to adults. Losing their religion awareness. But they'd do something silly, and it was fine, an oddity passing by. And they had kids, who did very silly things, and they would just sit their, as adults, smiling at them together. And I was like, "I went though MY ENTIRE LIFE being told there was something wrong with anything I did, and now it's a field day for your kids?!"
Which reminds me. What do these things have in common? Not morality or consistency. What they have in common is that they benefit the jerks. That's what double standards are for.
But, I am a wise individual. I know that most people strive for silliness like they hunger for Nirvana. It's just that they are too wrapped up in themselves and social strictures to dare take the risk of being the first silly person in the room. (Unless it's the jerk with the big mouth who everyone cower-tows to, which isn't silliness, it is boorish bullying).
Silliness is like freedom. Everyone wants it, but they just don't get it. And they hate the people who are free. Which becomes the focus, creating a very anti-free society, ultimately. But, we have structures, institutions, exchanges, manners, and other means by which people feel they can work towards freedom, and silliness. Some spend their whole lives obsessing over these structures and forgetting about the goal. Which is, for labour, to rest and receive. Which is, for the day's activity, to sleep and dream. Which is, for life, to be happy and end up in some kind of heaven. Where life is beautiful ALL the time.
But, when someone sees someone they don't like being happy, then that person must be cheating, right? It is those who feel least free who rush to take away the freedom of those they see as being not on their side. And it the unsilly who will allow silliness amongst their friends, but do everything they can to destroy it in their enemies. It's all relative to politics. And the great dreams and ideals we wished for as children? They can tend to fight their way into extinction in a politically perverse world. Adolescents growing into this world may play into these political games, and then die, really accomplishing nothing, in the big picture.
Which is why the saints preach forgiveness, and all that stuff (which, to some, holds as much water as silliness). Forgiveness is a way of turning things around, bit by bit. So are the virtues of gratitude, grace and humility. But it won't work if it's just platitudes. It can only work if it is real in the system. But that's a whole nuther discussion.
When you have people who refuse to see the awareness in you, they are either going to have to change, or you are going to keep going through hoops to try to satisfy them. If they can't forgive - in other word, allow you to walk ahead without blame - then you are really just reinforcing their game. And, sometimes, the only way YOU can forgive THEM is by breaking free of that game. If you think life is beautiful, and they refuse to let you express that, as you, then business do you have being in their hold? What's the point of it? The system isn't changing favorably for you. 'What is more, that is not what you are here for.' We're all put here to follow our own will, our own dream, and our own leisure. Being unaware of this is a political act. Being unaware gives over good soil to the seeds of injustice.
Everybody knows this. Everybody feels this. Everybody wants this. Some don't know how to advance in the direction of their dreams, at the moment. Some may have communication problems. Some may be children daunted by abuse, unable to open up even to themselves. Some may be battered and broken and all alone. But everybody wants to try - or to learn how to try. And, in the process, some of them may be the biggest bastards and criminals on the planet. But the fact remains, everyone wants to be more aware. More in touch. More themselves. That is the call of existence - the trick it plays to convince you to keep on living. Keep on hoping. Keep on believing there is a reason for you.
Viktor Frankl showed, that even if reduced to skin and bones in ghastly NAZI concentration camps, how deep is this drive - so deep that the most abused and deprived prisoners would push on, day after day, maintaining hop despite all hope. And many of them lived to see the Allied troops come in and finally free them. They held out so super-humanly, because they INSISTED that life is beautiful! And that was the point of the movie. Ironically, it was these prisoners who thereby proved themselves the true supermen.
The triumph of the Unseen.
In the end, it is that silly willy within us that saves the day. It's why we build the great power generators. It's why we go to the moon. It's why we pay the bills. The entire economy of the world is premised upon people making their choices, having their desires, and trying to survive. This is why Western Culture, upholding the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, can be a hopeful one. If it remembers and keeps holy the unseen awareness of others, it can be a transcendent culture. It's not easy, but it can try.
But, you get a world fighting its way towards war, where people are on one side or the other, and rules and manners are breaking down, the whole point seems to become mass denial of our inner humanity. Like a death cult.
I am sitting at the table, apparently happy as a hobbit, recorded for posterity, unhappy - but I am pushing on. I am grateful. I am generous. I am humble. It's like a lifetime of giving up the ghost. Offerings to the ducks. What do I get back? People accusing me of their own guilt? People cashing in on me for their own glory? People misrepresenting me? Chiding me for the silliness they wish they could claim? The freedom they think they see, and so envy? The box they put me in as a child, so they could comfort themselves? It's a lot of crap.
But, most of it is just people trying. Not knowing. Wanting. Passing time. And hoping. Everyone wants to see that life is beautiful. Some are burdened with showing that to them. Leaders of the heart. They make money from it. They may make friends. Or they may pass out of this Earth alone and unseen. Like so many trillions of other creatures. We trod upon every day.
But they were never unseen.
You were never unseen.
Life, itself, is observation, shared.
Acknowledged and ready to begin again.
Now my brother has a son who acts like Benigni.
"Benigni" - Italian for, "benign."
All is forgiven.
LJ credit goes to Arrctic - for the movie part.
"The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence." - Nikola Tesla.