December 25th, 2013.
I can't sleep.
I still wait for Santa.
I don't know why I wait anymore. I don't know why, every year, I can't
sleep the night before Christmas. I already know what he's getting me
this year, but it's no longer about the anticipation. Yet, I ponder
the imponderables this night more than any other.
As the new year approaches, I do what we should all do every year. We
look towards the future as if it is a mirror to see not what we could
have done better, but everything we're taking with us. In the mirror,
we reflect on the memories, not the regrets. For a life without regret
is truly lived. Regret is not like mistakes. It's more of a disease
than a hiccup.
At the end of the mirror, I see myself one year ago:
With my collar up and my head down low,
I was walking upwind, completely alone.
It had to have been cold. Freezing, even.
Wishing I was any other place I could have been.
In southerner fashion, I now imagine a tundra of clean white snow, as
snow would appear to someone who has never been in it. It sure looked
more like Christmas, but never felt that way until I would be "home"
with my Mom and my Dad.
The entire concept of "home," to me, is strongest during this
time of the year. It hasn't really existed in my life for over half a
decade, but I've become comfortable with this fact.
Every Christmas morning was purposely the same. In recent years, as
much as we reached toward the sensation of tradition, we pulled back
on the warmth of nostalgia. Therefore, it was tradition I looked
forward to, but nostalgia I felt.
However, this year, tradition has been turned on it's head.
Thanksgiving was spent cooking, but not by my parents. I, myself, kept
a close eye on the Dad-inspired turkey. It had to be as tender as any
memory I have
of Thanksgiving. And it actually was.
But it wasn't "tradition."
Tradition is hundreds of miles away.
For now.
It wasn't entirely missing, but I was still looking for it.
Wherever it is now, I know the probability of it being gone again next year.
As if it's hiding with the anticipation of being found.
"Tradition" may feel too far away to find right now, but Nostalgia is
right around the corner. While I'm thinking maybe you can't have a
little of one without the other, I'm learning that's not true at all.
Coming from Latin and Greek terminology, the word itself means a "pain
and suffering" for "the return home."
I sigh, on the couch, while typing this
It's past midnight, just after the Eve of Christmas
The sun will soon rise on this magical day
Only when I sleep with Bear in my way
Perhaps after a cup of Hot Chocolate?
The television turned off and silence met
I'll look through the window, maybe walk through the door
In Michigan, this would be a chore
Outside, in a blanket, I'm not too cold
"Come out, Bear, do as you're told"
Under the moon, no shine of new fallen snow
None of the "lustre of mid-day" to any objects below.
I'll look with a...smile...over a valley of darkness
The only lights in the farthest away distance
I don't have to look far, at least not for fun
I can go back inside, put on Johnny Carson
But looking for St. Nick gives me this smile
Even though he'd never be within a mile
Still, this is what tradition should be
Even without my Dad next to me
Nor my Mom inside baking for Santa
My smile fades from this curse: Nostalgia
I sense movement behind the door. There he is. (He takes his time).
It's chilly out, but I could certainly take advantage of my two
restless legs down the driveway, and the idea grows stronger when the
black figure on four restless legs joins me on the porch. He sits, though, as
if looking over his kingdom. I'm wondering what he sees in the
midnight darkness. Like Mufasa, I say to him:
"One day, Bear, the sun will set on my time...and rise with you
as the new king."
He looks up to me. But, with pity.
"For you see, dearest Bear...*(stretching out my arm)* everything the
light touches is our kingdom."
His head slowly turns back to the valley of darkness. He's accepting a
great new responsibility...or ignoring me. The latter, I assume.
I look at whatever he sees and imagine a less hairy, less legged son
of mine taking me much more seriously. I hope he would learn quick to
have a sense of humor. That would be my main goal. If I could pass
that on letting him find his own...I know of no greater gift.
Looking at Bear, I wonder what makes him so happy.
"Do you even have a sense of humor?"
Day after day, he waits for Corrie and I to come home. I've heard he
waits by the door for me when Corrie's home alone. Of course, he'll go
into the bathroom
with her just to make sure she doesn't escape through the window. He's
afraid she will.
He's not fearless.
Well, unless there's some kind of external threat...like a bird on the
porch or a car driving by.
I trust he would protect us.
Dogs are just incapable of numbing vulnerability. Let me elaborate:
My job has quotas. My school had deadlines. Doctor's have test
results. Job interviews don't give callbacks. There are bad
neighborhoods. There are liars. People will do anything for money.
There's "too good to be true."
There's a catch to everything.
We live in a vulnerable world.
Dog's do not.
We make the uncertain certain.
We embrace facts over mysteries.
We put other people down like we're on a pedestal. Especially when
they're happy with less than what we have, we lose sense in our own
lives.
We think less of people who have less than we do.
We are human. We are sick.
What makes us different from animals? How did our evolution speed up
and leave every other species so far behind? Well...we got a lot more
creative. How?
We cook our own food.
That's added quite a lot to the development of the human brain,
actually, but what I think we are capable of over anything else on
Earth is that we have the power of creativity. We created cooking.
Animals will spend their days looking for food when humans created
food that gives us all our nutrients in three meals a day (or
less)(and vitamins).
That's when creativity was born. (That's when the brain's development
began dramatic advancements)
Bear and I walk over to the pool across the driveway.
Once again, the right side of my brain takes me someplace else. I'm
often places I've never been. My memories of snow, I'll say again,
have been replaced by the southerner's perspective. There is only
fresh powder that seems to shine in the moon light. It is as it should
be on The Night Before Christmas.
There is no pool in my mind. There would be a great pond, frozen over.
I'm sitting next to it with a daughter in my lap. After tying her ice
skates, I make her stand with me. Then, I hop in place until she is as
excited as I am. It doesn't take much for her ears to be connected by
a huge smile. She stands in place perfectly just to watch me slide
backwards trying to impress her. In her excitement, giggles put her on
her butt. Everything impresses her.
And very little impresses me. (Although, I'll act impressed frequently).
It was the industrial revolution (here goes my mind, every Christmas
Eve, it's tradition)...schools and colleges really started to boom.
Notice: Schools don't push ART and THEATER and MUSIC as the main
classes of study. No, it's MATH and ENGLISH and SCIENCE that were most
important in the industrialization. School became industry in itself,
churning out student after student who graduate with the same grades
in the same classes (notice they all dress the same when accepting
their diplomas). We're measured on the same scale. We compete for the
same things. We duplicate rather than innovate.
But...there are ALWAYS exceptions. To any rule, there are always
exceptions. (See: My sisters. At least.).
I love the concept of big business. I love the idea of running a good company.
I researched who makes the most money (and who capitalizes) back when
I was looking into those Pyramid-schemes. I looked into what made a
good, healthy business. I looked into what motivated people. And I
came up with ideas of my own.
And what was I told?
"Chris, you're trying to be innovative. You want to be duplicative."
(A man actually used this word and in this sentence).
Because that's what works.
That's business, though. We just do the same thing over and over again.
Well, I went the other way.
I embrace fear and vulnerability, and everything in between right and wrong.
I rarely think about where I would be if I were still in school.
I still hate the concept.
If I ran a business, I would not hire just the "educated." I don't
care if they're "trainable." I care if they're passionate. I would
hire the people who want to work for me.
"If you judge a fish by it's ability to climb a tree, it will always
live believing it is stupid." - Einstein.
Eventually, I would have embraced school, though, right?
In that alternate reality, I am:
Frightened of being wrong in a place where mistakes are nearly stigmatized.
The incorrect answer becomes no answer at all merely because it
"isn't right" and it IS wrong.
When you look at that last sentence as perfectly sensible, you're
probably imagining a math class.
Math class should be where creativity really blossoms. The math
classes I had, though, were just creativity killers. Murderers. Taken
outside of the actual classrooms, statistics make this world look
progressive (life span, brain capacity, use of technology) and yet
evil (income of lower and middle classes vs. income of the top 1%).
Unfair.
"Life's not fair," right?
Life evolved this way.
"Poverty is not an accident, it can be removed by the actions of human
beings." - Nelson Mandela
Yet our congress believes the fast food workers don't exactly work
hard enough to deserve a minimum wage increase. Their pay isn't worthy
of the unnatural financial inflation of the past few decades. The same
congress with
members earning north of $200,000 annually (that even WalMart
employees put money towards) and considered the "least productive
congress in history."
"Bear, when are you going to go out and get a job?" I frequently ask of my dog.
"When you put me through college," I imagine him saying.
Creativity becomes victim in many schools.
We don't train our dogs to do what they want.
They...are the animals.
*Sigh*
"Wanna go inside, Ted Bear?"
He's fine with the idea. It's become toasty inside. My hot chocolate
was very unnecessary. (Although...it rhymed).
The walk home is shorter than it should have been. We should have
taken a real walk. Laying down will just get my blood flowing to my
brain even more. I can't shut it off. Not tonight, anyway.
"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with
anything original." - Ken Robinson on "fear."
If you're not prepared to be wrong...that's vulnerability.
Ken Robinson (a college professor) tells a story of a girl he met,
Gillian Lynne. When she was a young girl, she couldn't focus on
anything. Her studies were suffering and the teachers didn't blame
themselves. They wrote to her mother and diagnosed her with a learning
disorder. These days, it's called ADHD, perhaps you've heard of it. It
is prevalent in people who can't sit still. People who can't focus on
one thing at a time (boys and men, too). People completely raised on
video games and television. I've seen hordes of people looking down at
their cell phones as if the zombie apocalypse has already been
realized. They're with their friends. In line for coffee. At the
movies. This was in the 1930s,
though. The girl, Gillian, didn't have a cell phone, and did not have
"ADHD" (probably just because it didn't quite exist yet).
There's a happy ending because this story does NOT end with doctors
giving her Ritalin and sending her back to class.
No...doctors of this girl in this story played music to calm her down.
And suddenly, she could focus. It still wasn't school she would focus on. It
was the music.
Her legs would move to the beat.
"Your daughter isn't sick...she's a dancer."
Taken from Wikipedia: Gillian Barbara Lynne (born 20 February 1926)
is a British ballerina, dancer, actor, theatre director, television
director and choreographer noted for her popular theatre choreography
associated with the musical "Cats" and the current longest running show
in Broadway history, "The Phantom of the Opera."
We cannot selectively numb.I mentioned that dogs don't numb vulnerability.
People do. They try, anyway. Drugs. Alcohol. Food. Exercise.
Anything...in excess. Addiction was born before creativity.
We cannot numb the feeling of fear or vulnerability without
numbing...happiness...or joy.
We know this because of the people who live whole-heartedly.
The embrace vulnerability. They gain connection to other people
through authenticity.
They believe that what makes them vulnerable makes them beautiful.
Subsequently...they are more accepting of the world as it is.
Therefore, they inspire a future in what this world could be.
I read a story of a child just getting to school. He was in line for
breakfast in the morning before grabbing a waffle or something...maybe
an apple or something equally healthy (I hope). When at the head of
the line, he was short 30 cents on his paycard. Actually, he was a
part of a reduced-meal program, and the meal itself was 30 cents. His
paycard was empty.
I'm assuming the paycard was prepaid by the student himself thanks to
his parents. Like me, I'm sure he's very appreciative of his parents
for every dollar that allowed him to look
forward to lunch hour. Of course, I didn't have breakfasts...breakfast
has only recently become "the most important meal of the day" for me.
However, for this young boy, his breakfast was put into the trash
because he had touched it and could not pay for it. With the rest of
the line of children waiting on him, his mom said he was embarrassed.
While this story upset a lot of people (it went viral on Facebook at
least), I was imagining myself in the situation...from the parent's
perspective. It would take a lot for me to not whip a nickel and a
quarter at the person who denied him. This was a twelve-year-old and
it happened in Texas. Google "Texas 30 cents breakfast," and it should
be the number one story.
And now, my favorite quote by the great film director, Stanley Kubrick:
"I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children
anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting
failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. INTEREST can
produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to
a firecracker."
Many people don't have the time because they don't take the time to be
thankful...but...
I would like to thank everyone in my life for who I am. I have
considered myself fearless, and that is because I am surrounded by
people who don't give me anything to be afraid of. I used to think I
was sheltered, but I have always been encouraged to embrace my
creativity.
I was talking to Aunt Pegi a lot after a place I had called "home" was
broken into early this year. She told me that she was happy about the
whole thing. Haha, let me put that into context: She was happy that it
got us talking. We talked for hours. There were several moments I had
completely forgotten about the robbery itself. One of these moments
was me telling her how proud I was to be part of this family. I was,
of course, talking about how good of a person I saw that she was, but
I was thinking about my sisters, Becca and Diana, and Mom and Dad.
We see the good the world is capable of, but I think we are afraid of
a lot of the bad in this world.
All we can do for for future generations is allow them the privilege
that I had. We allow them to know that they are imperfect and they are
hard-wired for struggle the moment they're born. We raise them while
granting them the feeling of love and belonging.
Grandpa always told me that it was so much easier to do things right
the first time rather than having to apologize for doing something
wrong. I hear versions of this advice in business meetings. I always
thought there was a great deal of logic there, but embracing the
ability to be wrong (and the creativity of getting there) and evolving
to a more powerful way of being right will always prevail in my book.
Many people ignore the fact that something is done wrong the first
time and spend their entire lives making it right.
When, really, all we needed to do was evolve.
Maybe say "We're sorry." Definitely say "We'll fix it."
And make it better.
Business 101: Don't work hard. Work smart.
(Grandpa taught me that, too)
"[We need to] love with our whole hearts even though there's no
guarantee." - Brene Brown
"We must believe that we are enough. We become kinder and gentler to others
and we become kinder and gentler to ourselves. That's it." (Brene Brown also)
Back to Ken Robinson:
"[We have been given] the gift of the human imagination. We have to be
careful now to use this gift wisely. And the only way we'll do it is
to realize our creative capacities for the richness they are and
seeing our children for the hope that they are. And our task is to
educate their whole being so they can face this future. By the way, we
may not see this future. But they will. And our job is to help make
something of it."
There's that mirror again.
A year from now...that mirror I look into will be much fuller. I won't
have to look far for tradition. It will be the start of it. A year
from then, I will be in the midst of the days for which I will soon be
nostalgic.
For now, while I'm still not going to be able to sleep
I shall try, maybe count some of those sheep
Corrie has long been nestled snug in her bed
With visions of, what? ...Balancing books on her head?
I dunno what she dreams nightly
But I get to be next to her, holding her tightly
Then, as usual, from the Unconscious, I get hit
(I remind myself she doesn't really mean it)
And rolling over officially ends my day
Now, if only the brain worked that way
This night has always been about no worries the next day. Tomorrow's
Christmases have always had more to be excited about than any present.
In another sense of the word, they've been about the future also. Bear
hops up in bed next to Corrie. Rose always lies under the covers
somewhere. Allie's resting her head on my feet.
And I think about Baby. This was Corrie's Baby for 11 1/2 years, but
we all lost her this November.
Then I thank God for everything I have, have had, and will have. I
pray for the strength, health, and happiness of all my friends and all
my family. And I pray both He and Baby are watching over
the six of us in peace. Amen.
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