“Little” Lessons
Little treasures run in the family. These treasures belong to my younger daughter, Sophia.
Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta remarked, when she visited the United States, that she had found wealth but also many, many lonely people. This she called this spiritual poverty.
Literal, haunting poverty across the globe is now worse than ever, the consequence in part of greed, entitlement, and the practice of getting rich on peoples deemed “lesser than,” as a way of justifying the exploitation of them.
The kind of immature, mean-spirited, fascistic-style leadership we are experiencing now has mysteriously led me into reminiscing about the years when I was just awakening to the power that we all have as individuals to affect profoundly our own happiness as well as the lives of others.
When I was seven years old, I used to go over to my friend Amy’s house after school. She lived in a very well-ordered home with a playhouse in the backyard. She changed into play clothes when she got home, practiced piano every day, and went to bed at 7:30 pm. She also had little things in her bedroom that I coveted, such as elegant little glass animals from the toy store.
One day, unable to control my desire to possess her impossibly cute little animals, I slipped one into my underwear. It was a glass deer with spots, really tiny because it was a baby deer (I had left the mother deer childless). I walked home with this fragile deer in my loose-fitting underwear feeling uncomfortable, and guilty. I sensed immediately that the pleasure of “ownership” would not be as I had imagined. Almost immediately, I experienced regret. I wanted to return this stolen treasure, but what good way was there to do that? I hid the little deer in my bedframe, and there would be no joy of ownership. This little glass animal had become a curse and a burden. I had my own little animals from the local children’s store anyways, so why did I do it? Mine had been gifted to me by my parents at Christmas and on my birthday. Stealing wasn’t a very satisfying occupation, not much fun, and guilt and shame-inducing besides.
I wasn’t done learning, however. As a nine-year old girl staying with my good friend for three blissful weeks while our parents were away, I started on my second venture that gave me the slightest taste of the “dark” world of exploitation. My friend was my age, but her little sister, a few years younger, was at home with us along with our young babysitter, all of sixteen years of age but driving already and quite responsible. My friend’s little sister, like me, loved “little things” like empty bottles of elegant perfume; I coveted these treasures, and so one by one I convinced her to give them to me. I would give her a dime or a quarter, and she would give me a treasure. It sort of went along like that. I would have been wise to spend my dimes and quarters at the local candy store, where we used to go to “stock up” on Bazooka bubble gum, gummy bears, Dip Sticks, Razzles, and other delights. I would finish a pack of Razzles in about two seconds.
When our parents returned, their mother had a little conversation with me, and I understood from this talk that my friend’s little sister might miss the treasures that I had acquired for almost nothing. I might regret it if I were to “take the money and run,” as it were. I’m glad that her mother spoke up, because I returned the treasures and learned an important lesson. I was capable, even as a little girl, of low-level “exploitation,” but it was enough to introduce me to the concept in a safe setting. I didn’t like the feeling. Again, I experienced shame and regret. As a nine year old child, I came to understand that I was capable of taking advantage of another person, even if it was done innocently. I had experienced what it was like to have power over another. After all, I had a few years on my little trade partner measured in height and “sophistication.” I was laying out in the sun to tan myself, walking with my friend to the local candy store, and singing along to seventies tunes on the radio.
But after a blissful few weeks sans parental guidance, I was stopped in my tracks by a mother who was paying attention to the “little things.” This now long-time grandmother, wonderfully, is still my friend and mentor.
We’re living on a planet run by adults who behave like lawless, unsupervised and cruel children, and the consequences of decisions made by these “adults” —motivated by power, disruption, greed, and acquisition—are devastating. We need more than ever to become attentive mothers of our planet. As this wise friend and mother demonstrated, no action toward this effort is too small. Her gently confrontational intervention shaped my conscience for a lifetime.
The god of narcissism is going to have to vanish, because more than ever, collectively and individually, we need to become capable of wise choices, knowing that we do each have power, and each choice that we make matters for the whole of our planet.
Dishonest, effectively unschooled, apparently never-corrected or spiritually-guided leaders (the main evil and infantile one and those who carry out his shambolic commands) shed light on our society, one plagued with a hard-hearted, close-minded short-sightedness that’s contributing every day to chaos at home and increasingly unsafe and inhumane conditions for human beings around the globe. Many are being abducted out of the country without due process, and the rest of us are being told that no one is safe, regardless of our status as citizens. People in government positions are living in fear, and a few are now speaking out about this in public. As our country withdraws from the world, moreover, babies and human beings accustomed to help from the United States are now being deprived of the vital sources of food and medicine they once relied upon to make it to the following day. More than ever, we are living in a world where people are crossing borders in order to survive, only to be dehumanized and demonized for it.
Heartbreaking.
Individually, many Americans are brave, self-reflective, and inspired to rise above the chaos and into a higher vibration of respect, truth, compassion, sanity, and love. But at this time, as a nation, power is yielded with the intention of hurting as many as possible; we and others around the world will be more and more every day experiencing consequences of living in a time when those with power embody a way of being in which empathy, truthfulness and a steadiness of hand are foreign languages. As Saint Teresa observed, moreover, more than ever we are a spiritually impoverished nation.
We could use a little intervention, to be stopped in our tracks as I was once stopped, in a way that changed my way of thinking, in a way that brought me to my senses and into my soul.
——————————————————————————————————————--
This post is dedicated to the responsible, hard-working, and dedicated parents I had the privilege of knowing and learning from along the way and to the ones parenting presently with courage, selflessness and presence of mind. I’m keeping top of mind all of the parents around the world doing this job the best that they can, despite circumstances most of us could never imagine.