Since all of us were once children, we know that when an adult tried to say something soothing or funny or distracting while we were whining about being pushed or shunned, it made us madder. We didn’t want our hurt to be trivialized. Give us sympathy, rub our owies, then go beat up our enemy’s dad. That’s what we really wanted.
We got bigger, learned to drive and vacuum, and looked forward to being loose and fun on our own. We grew whiskers on our chins or legs and acquired more experience at getting hurt.
Freedom didn’t go as anticipated. We really did need to find someone gullible enough to hire us so we could support a lifestyle that included a room in some stranger’s house in another city so we could feel liberated.
And we needed a landline and bus fare.
Somehow, despite all self-imposed obstacles, we grew into full adulthood and refused to hang out with people who didn’t like us. It kept us nimble and alert, sometimes friendless, but we shrugged that off and got a new job in a new city.
But we lived in a country whose president told us some lies about our military and what it was being directed to do. The next president did the same thing. And the next. And on and on.
These presidents went through life knowing they caused hardship on families, communities and congregations, but they got rich doing it because they had access to the money that funded such folly.
And now we’re on our 13th president since we skinned our first knee, and it’s the same. Promises are broken or reversed. Even peace-loving Jimmy Carter, God bless him, used the military for covert and sinister interventions.
Carter was a decent Christian man, but he got elected anyway. He was angered by the 43-year Somoza regime in Nicaragua where bait-switch-murder was how you got things done. Carter’s political overthrow wishes went nowhere because Congress liked money more than people. Sound familiar?
We’re at a new low and not at all sure how to get out of this. Do we elect someone else to give us the business? Which one? Smart one? Cute one? Young one? The one who says he’s an authentic family man but denied he knew what his influence-peddling son was up to?
Or do we simply keep driving, vacuuming and whining?
It seems that if we want to keep growing, we could start with providing. Taking care of our people and animals and water, then show others it can be done despite naiveté. We can be free and happy and an addition to humans – those animals who make art.
Or we could just elect Donald Trump again and give the green light to corporate bribes, shallowness, land grabbing, illegal detentions, money siphoning, nepotism and bald face lies.
Or we could simply be satisfied and smile when someone says, “You’re aging well,” and not threaten to beat up their dad.