Washington, DC – There was one of those feel good videos on CNN the other day that put the surreal reality we are living in a glaring spotlight. A grandmother had fallen and hit her head while taking her three-year-old grandson into the house. Her phone was in the car. “It was really, really dark,” the little boy later described. But his grandma was hurt.
She told him to get the phone out of the car. A video doorbell caught that tiny little child walking in the dark repeatedly muttering to himself, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,” as he got the phone and saved his grandma.
If it were up to the current creeps making choices for our lives and the lives of folks all over the world, all their grandmas would be dead. All those spineless nut jobs should watch the bravery of that child in the dark, scared but knowing that her survival was up to him.
The horrors of being primaried terrorize the Congress. The fears of a tweet paralyze CEOs. And so, as we all watch a billionaire and a wannabe billionaire take a hatchet to eighty years of carefully negotiated treaties and relationships, upending the tri-partite government established by our Constitution, all these full-grown people are muttering to themselves, “Be afraid, be very very afraid.
Shakespeare wrote in JULIUS CEASER that cowards die a thousand deaths, but heroes die only once. The daily fears of losing the job they refuse to do remind me of something Senator Byrd once opined. He was asked how, having insisted at one point his stance on an issue, he could then reverse it when voting. To paraphrase his response, he argued that if he did what he actually wanted, he would lose his job.
A person is not a job, face, or internet following. A person is what is inside: the knowledge, experiences, relationships, successes and failures, faiths and convictions, love, and grief. When someone loses themselves so much that the opinions of others about them replace that inner self, the fear that they will be exposed for their true selves becomes like a never ending death. That pile in front of them, their wealth, image, position, fame, or notoriety could disappear, and then who, what would they be?
The TV is full of ads promoting products that remove all normal natural body odors, that make your hair grow on your head but remove it from other places, that will make you thin, that will cure your moods if only you will call this number. It goes on and on and on, the never ending need to polish up what other people see. The image is the point. The emperor’s new clothes are simply dross, and the little child knows that, but he still tells himself not to be afraid because he at least knows and cares that it all depends on him and his courage.
M.A. Callahan
- M.A. Callahan#molongui-disabled-link
- M.A. Callahan#molongui-disabled-link
- M.A. Callahan#molongui-disabled-link
- M.A. Callahan#molongui-disabled-link
