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Respect.
Do we know what it is? I wonder…
The way we treat each other – especially our children - is like the way we treat a dog and its blanket. The dog just got it nice and stinky with their own very individual signature smell impregnated all over it, then we come along and screw our noses up at the disgusting odour assaulting our delicacy, wafting like a guided missile straight up the nearest nostril, as we pass by on our very important missions at least 700 times a day.
We are driven, no actually utterly compelled, to deodorise the life of dog out of its eye sockets, the offence to our sensibilities earth-shatteringly inhumane, and not to be tolerated a moment longer. So into the washing machine the offending rag must go, unaccompanied by anything human so as not to contaminate, that way we can be sure dog can be accepted into the fold reasonably well. And the reason we have dog as part of the family is…? Ah yes, because we get obsessed by their addictive and undying love when we’re out of earshot or visibility for even a minute and that kind of adoration is very hard to find even with bribery.
So dog, you exist on our territory only on our terms and it’s a one-way street I’m afraid.
Oh yes the analogy with people, well kids in particular, as we tell ourselves they’re young and not as experienced, definitely less worldly and we can lord it over them as we like and make out that we know better so we can knock them into the shape we think they should be – a clumsy attempt to make them into a pale facsimile of ourselves. Why would we do that – the need to dominate and get our own back on our suppressed angst-ridden years made intolerable by the unrealistic expectations of our 'jailors' and all those declarations that we will not turn into our mothers or fathers…yeah right.
Each step of the way as these kids stumble, grow and falter, shaping themselves and finding out who and what makes them tick – what makes them ‘smell’ their particular smell, we come marching in with our very sizeable hobnails and refute those brave attempts at id ID, reducing them to wailing banshees in utter frustration at their mission being thwarted – and we wonder why we have teenage angst and crime and punishment in the extreme. Have we learned nothing – didn’t we go through the same humiliation at the hands of our own terrorist parents, no recognition, validation, and respect and celebration at having developed a mind of our own and come through relatively unscathed? Ah we of fickle spirit.
If we so much as get a whiff of individualism creeping through the tightly held atmosphere, we sweep past, defusing the minefield as we go and dump the lot in the biological wash to erode the microbes of another spotless mind, in case it reminds us of our own subterranean lost past participle.
Maybe we should just look to dog and say mea-culpa, though I don’t go in much for blame, it’s such a self-defeating pastime and keeps you in the dog-house far more than you think, for who you’re targeting to keep under wraps, restrained from self actualisation, is only yourself.
Here's To You! See ya
Pam
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