I was listening to my Speak no Evil cd (Wayne Shorter, of course) and it queued up 'Infant Eyes', I was completely disarmed. It's such a sad and beautiful song, and I had chosen it as music for Tristan's funeral, some 6 years ago. In a moment I remembered everything, I could see and hear everything, I was instantly back in the Funeral Home and the music was playing.
My life changed so much that week. Things that seemed so important now seemed meaningless, I fell back on my family and my wife and friends, I was confused and dazed. It took a long time and I did cope, but Il am not the same person I was, whether that's good or bad I don't know. I can't tell if I'm stronger, or weaker, but I think that I tried to disappear, tried to hide from people because I didn't want to talk about it. It is still difficult.
For the rest of the drive I thought about other things: my life, my purpose, why I do what I do, what I was meant to do, who I am. I realized a couple things and one is that I chose to be a musician, no one did it for me, and nobody is going to show me the golden path to success. I have always relied on other people to do things for me ... I don't find gigs, I don't peddle myself, I don't form bands etc. etc. I rely on others and that has lead me to sort of a paid gun status, I play for almost anyone.
I've been coasting for quite awhile, and I've definitely posted about this before, and I've had sudden sparks of gumption but they never last. It's so easy to just settle back into the 'everyman' position, especially here in Alberta where everyman is everywhere. I never entirely fit those pants, I never had those goals but when you have to eat and pay the bills and feed your kids that's what you do.
I don't know exactly how I'll go about this but I know I was much more serious before I started into the road of lull. I still don't fit in and I haven't really tried, but my creative side has been almost lulled to sleep by the growl of the commuter traffic and the hum of the AC. It's time I woke it up, shook off the lull and worked for myself. It's gonna be double shifts from now on.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
-Martin Niemöller
Ever day many of us read in the paper or hear second-hand about a teenager or young adult, or pre-teen that is completely out of control, a vandal, a thief, has committed assault or worse. I can tell you what's causing this but you probably already know.
Last Tuesday Xavier was playing in the playground outside his preschool, Amber was standing along the sidelines with our 1 1/2 year old. Amber saw a boy the same age as him pick up sand and threw it in Xavier's face so she went up to the kid and said "You don't do that, you apologize". The kid went running back to his parents who just said in a somewhat condescending tone"'Oh, are you being bad?" but did... you guessed it... SQUAT. No "Go apologize" no reprimand, no "I'm taking you home", no "Go sit in the car" no .. anything.
If my mom had seen me do that when I was a kid she would have either reprimanded me right there, told me to apologize, or grabbed me and we would have went home where the punishment would be much worse.
You know what? 4 year olds make mistakes, they can be mean and malicious and stupid and everything that their parents are, but if you are a responsible person you say "Don't do that" and "Apologize right now!". You don't act like your little angel could do no wrong or that you are better than everyone else so you don't have to apologize, it would be too embarassing. That's right, it's embarrassing to you, because he's acting just like you do.
How the effin' hell are kids going to learn unless we teach them? How did you learn? I don't think any of us magically had all the social finesse that we have today, we all bumped into kids, threw fists, got into trouble, yelled and screamed. We made mistakes, we were corrected (sometimes too corrected) and we learned how to act in our society.
We wonder why kids are such a problem, we wonder why there are such terrors in middle upper-class neighborhoods. It's not the poor kids who are the problem anymore it's the kids of the "I don't have time to discipline you or be a parent I have a golf game/massage/spa day/club to go to" generation. The "My kid could do know wrong" parents are breeding bullies and sociopaths because they're doing what the single parents and work-all-day-and-night-to-make ends-meet parents have been accused of --> neglect.