Inner Child: Occupation and Response
"Tell me, what
is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" -- Mary Oliver
Part 1: The Occupation
Well, Mary, the first thing I am going to do is grow up! I
am going to smother this pathetic inner child that is always asking annoying
questions. I mean, they never stop! And
they’re so stupid. For example, last night he looked up at the sky and asked,
pointing at the stars, if those are the eyes of his friends that haven’t been
born yet. Can you believe it? What an idiot. And once he asked if the clouds
were people, just a different kind of people. I laughed. Everyone knows what
clouds are; they are vaporized water that coagulates. And stars are just big rocks.
It’s not rocket science, kid! Oh, and he’s
so distracted! He’ll be walking towards a bug on the ground and then stop and
look at a flower for ten minutes, and then go pick and eat a ripe cherry tomato
and then be sorry he missed the bug! Ugh, I don’t think this child has much of
a future without my adult Self stepping in to intervene. So that’s what I’m going
to do.
Once this child that is so obsessed with play and learning
nonsensical things has been taught that those are not the ways of happy adults,
and to aid in this endeavor, I will send him to school where he will sit in a
class to learn the lessons of life. He will be instructed by teachers that may
know a lot, but we will keep them to one subject for maximum efficiency. The
kid will sit to his normal limits of attention, whatever the adults say is
normal anyway, and then test him to make sure he has memorized the facts that
were presented. Integrating the facts with practical life experience will
happen, or not, but experience is not as important as the facts themselves, as
anyone knows, because you can get experience down the road. If this inner child
rebels, acts out or especially daydreams, we will make certain he is brought
back into line with others that are on a track of success. To the extent that
he conforms with the standards that are set up for successful people, he will
be happy. He will belong. He will have many friends.
Now, we all know there is trouble in the world. When that
happens, we go to war. What I hope for my inner child with his one wild and
precious life, Mary, is that he will learn how to be patriotic, that he will
pledge allegiance – not to Life, or to Creator, or to the happiness and
well-being and awakening of mankind to our heavenly Connection, but to a flag
and to the concepts that the leaders of his great nation say are important. To
defend what is his – or what the leaders tell him should be his – for these it
is worth risking his wild and precious life. In these evil times, we know that
what is rightfully ours will be threatened by those that disbelieve us. And to
defend his rights and those of his offspring so they can have anything they
want, this is a critically important endeavor. He will defend the right to the
lifestyle of a civilized nation. We worked hard for those rights. We sacrificed
for them. I mean, we didn’t, but someone did. So it is our responsibility to
not only defend these rights, but to find ways to sustain the lifestyles we
deserve. Build a fence to protect your stuff, growing inner child – so you can
be happy, and your offspring can be happy, too. It is not your responsibility
to worry about the residents of other nations. Your nation is what matters.
This should be apparent. (But it
probably isn’t to him yet, haha).
Once he is out of the service, with his one wild and precious
life, I hope my inner child will go work for someone, for that is the way of
safety. Sure his creativity may feel stifled at times, but that is why he gets
two weeks off per year, to go find his bliss again, so he can return energized
for another fifty weeks. If he stays long enough and does well, he can get more
days off – whatever the company says he can take. He can sail oceans and surf
and fish, as long as he comes back. If the company doesn’t sell or change
management or go through any hard times because of dishonesty, greed,
mismanagement, or the larger economy faltering, he can one day get money for
not working and look back on his life from a place of physical disrepair with the
satisfaction that comes to someone that has given his life to what matters.
During his years of working, this inner child will need to
find God. For that, he will need religion. I hope he will find one that gives
him direction about how to know God, that has pre-formed rites and rituals that
keep him in line, so he doesn’t do anything to offend the Great Deity upon whom
he is dependent for favor. With luck, he will never feel the need to ask
questions that would estrange him from his great God. With even greater luck,
he will have experiences that make him feel closer to Him, and hopefully those
experiences will teach him not only that he is right, but that others are wrong
and that their sacred experiences are
from the Enemy of All Righteousness. There is no doubt that this successful son
will be at war with this Enemy the whole of his life. May he vanquish him and
stand atop his dead body with the flaming sword of justice in his hand,
pointing it towards the sky which is the home of the Lord. I hope this for him.
There is much work to be done for this wild child of nature
to have a successful life. Let the training begin forthwith.
“Come on, kid, get in here.”
Part Two: The
Resistance
My name is Alexander. I don’t know how I know how to say
what I am about to say. I don’t even know how I know what I am going to talk about,
but I do.
I heard that man talking a second ago. I don’t like what he
says. I am only five years old, and I already
know that what he says is not right.
I know a lot more than he thinks, but he doesn’t think what
I know is very important. Like sometimes I lay in my bed and listen to the rain
on the window and it sounds like when my cat walks down the hall and it makes
me feel warm inside. And sometimes the moon breaks through the clouds when it’s
still raining and each drop holds its own rainbow, like its own little world. I
watch them shimmer in the moonlight that comes from so far away and it’s like it
makes them alive, just for me. I feel special, I feel close to the One who made
the raindrops when I see that because I know that in some way, everything is
just like that. I look up at the moon and it makes me smile, even when it’s not
raining. And when I see it poking through the clouds, I think of my mother.
She’s soft, like the moon. The sun can be hard. Once I got a sunburn and it
hurt for days and then my skin even peeled off! The moon never does that. The
sun makes everything so … so much.
But the moon, especially a full moon, gives me just enough. These quiet times
with her make me want to be nice to my sisters, too. I don’t think that guy knows
that the moon and I are friends. I feel
the same about the earth, too, except a little different because it has a
different personality to me. He would say those things are not important.
That’s not right. And what that guy said about my question about the stars
wasn’t right, either. In fact, I know
he’s wrong. Those really are the eyes
of my friends that haven’t been born yet. I know that when spacemen look at
them close they are rocks, but from a distance they are my friends, looking
down on me. I know that because they tell me stories of other times, times I
don’t remember when I am alone, when we were all together. The stories all
sound familiar, even though I don’t remember them without the help of my
friends. I don’t know how it works like that – that they can be one thing up close
and another thing far away and how I can hear them inside me, but that’s how it
really works. They come to me all the time. I could say more about it, but when
he was making fun of me and how I love everything – the bugs and flowers and
tomatoes – that I can’t get enough of those living things, it hurt my feelings.
It’s not my fault. I just… love everything. (shrugs). What’s wrong with that?
He talked about school, too, that guy. I’m not going. I’m
not. He can do whatever he wants, but I am not going. (Long pause, frowning).
But if he makes me go, you better watch out because I am not going to follow
their rules. I AM going to daydream, all the time, unless they say something
that lines up with what I already know inside me. I won’t listen to anything
else, from anyone that tries to teach me. I know more than people think. All
new stuff has to agree with what the stars and moon say, and what the dirt and
the bugs and sky says, or I am going to ignore it. It’s like there’s this
straight pole inside me that is made of truth. Any new idea that comes to my
mind has to be straight like it is or I am throwing it out. If a part or the
new idea is bent and a part is straight, I can maybe keep the straight part and
throw away the rest. If too much is bent, or if the teacher is mean, I will
throw it all out. Teachers should be nice because anything that lines up with
the pole inside me agrees with the moon, and I told you the moon is like my
mother, and the earth, and all that is Real. If Teachers are mean, it’s because
they hold too much inside them that is not real and that will make me doubt
everything they say. Good luck, school, teaching me anything that disagrees
with the stars. I will not listen.
After talking about school, the man talked about war. I
don’t understand war. It looks exciting to me, but it also looks like it hurts
everything good. I guess there are reasons that someone might have to fight.
Like, if someone was going to hurt one of my sisters, I would fight, even if I
was scared. I am the oldest, and the biggest and strongest. If my parents
weren’t around, who would help them? First I would try to talk it out – I would
try real hard because I would probably be scared– but if that didn’t work, put
‘em up! (Puts ‘em up, smiling a gap toothed grin). But the thing that made no
sense to me was the part about allegiance to the flag. It seems like that is not a good idea. The flag isn’t the one
telling people what to do; it’s the people that have the power behind it.
Anyone knows that. And if those people say to do things that don’t line up with
my inner pole, what then? What if they only want what’s good for them, and not
the people? I’ve heard the pledge of allegiance. I even said it. But I am not
going to say it any more until they change it to say:
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of
America, and to the republic for which it stands, as long as the leaders agree
with my inner pole, one of many nations that are all under God, that promise to
try not to divide themselves from each other, with liberty and justice for
all.” I like that last part the best. I don’t think they’re going to change the
pledge of allegiance for me, though, so I am not going to say it anymore. I’m
sorry I ever did.
That guy also talked about working for someone. That just
seems like school for grownups that forgot everything; forgot how to be happy,
forgot how to play, forgot how to hear things like stars talking, forgot about
their inner pole… (Appears to think hard). I guess there has to be work in the
world. But it seems like people should just do what they want to do for work
and spit up the hard jobs or the bad jobs between themselves. Otherwise, who
would haul the garbage? Who would (smiles and chuckles to himself) clean my
room? Some things have to be done, but there’s no way I am going to spend my …
what did she say? … “wild and precious life” sitting in a school for grownups.
No way. My inner pole wants to throw up when I think about that. It wants to
wither. I think that’s what the workers’ bosses want to happen. It makes the
adults easier to boss around.
And can I just say that church sucks? Why would God create a
whole world and then only visit the places that man built? God doesn’t like man-made stuff. He wants man to like God-made
stuff. Of all the things that guy said, the part about religion was the worst.
The worst! I want to make my own
religion, and have one member in it: me. I want to do whatever God tells me to
do, and I want to hear her in my own mind, with my own words. I don’t know if
God is a man or a woman or a child or an animal… I kind of think God is the
perfect mixture of all those things. Whatever he is, all I want to do is be in
front of him and I want him to be in front of me. I want to see the tracks of
God everywhere. I never want to forget what my heart tells me, what the moon
and stars and owls and dolphins and all the people who love each other say:
that I am somehow a part of God. I don’t know how, but something inside me tells
me that. And when I whisper to myself when I am going to sleep, “I am a part of
you, God. Thank you for telling me that,” my inner pole sings.
I think this adult that wants to possess me is going to have
a harder time than he thinks. I know that in some other times that I don’t
really remember he had an easier time with me. But not this time. This time I
am walking my own way. I am looking at the sky. I am standing on the earth. I
am holding to the trees.
This time, I am me.
--Eric Marley
September 11, 2014
