The Dilemma
When I was a child, I couldn’t wait to watch the Disney channel on Sunday night TV. I was always a little disappointed when a Frontier Land drama like Davy
Crockett came on. I wasn’t crazy for Adventure Land’s 20,000 Leagues under
the Sea either. I lived for Fantasyland animations like Lady and the Tramp or Bambi or Donald Duck and his friends. Animation fit my heart better; it was beautiful, creative, adorable, and safe, and it always had the ‘right’ happy ending.
Ponyo or My Neighbor Totoro by Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki (actually any film created by Studio Ghibli) has the same effect on me. It’s not that difficult times don’t occur in the characters’ lives, stuff happens, but the characters implicitly live with and acknowledge the trusted presence of Nature. All characters lean into the
synchronicity of the implicit world quite naturally as if recognizing on some
deep cellular level where they come from and who they belong to.
During the pandemic when school-aged developing children were shut in at home with their parents at a time when development calls for moving away from parents a bit to make friends and experiment with identities, TikTok appeared to
have become an instant go to place. TikTok, a Chinese owed social media platform,
posts short videos (generally from seconds to 3 minutes in length). Overnight, ordinary people became stars because their videos went viral (Galer, 2020, BBC
Culture). I can see why youth are attracted to this platform because no matter
what the reality is in lived life, self-expression, humor, and play can be freely
uploaded for others to experience. The private hope is that someone will like
us, however there are bullying pitfalls everywhere. And then would this give us a sense of connection? Or could this lead to an addiction or isolation?
Megan Garber, staff writer for The Atlantic, believes that reality is now blurred,
and we live in the metaverse (Vol 331, March 2023). This as if space
(illusion of normalcy) has more to do with our need for ‘unlimited’
entertainment. Garber notes that the major media companies have made “significant investments in virtual and augmented reality…their approaches vary, but their goal is the same: to transform entertainment from something we choose…into something we inhabit” (p. 20). She rightfully states that those who dwell in online environments long enough cannot easily discern facts from the hype of entertainment. The “real version of things starts to seem dull by comparison” (p. 21). Evidence for entitled dismissal of facts in favor of entitled fictions is now everywhere and bespeaks of an enormous underground frustration that we seemed to have hopped over in the past.
When I think of a need for constant entertainment, I think of what is being avoided! And why is it being avoided? And I wonder about the power of this underground rage-tinged stream of frustration carrying the likely debris of loneliness, despair, and hopelessness that has erupted onto the main stage of life.
It makes sense to me why we would want to obsessively seek entertainment wherever we can find it!
Not all of us have been ‘permitted to live’ our full humanity. I believe this is the root. And of course this must change. Our collective consciousness seems to be evolving to the degree that we will not and cannot accept a world that excludes some for others. The implicit feeling world seems to have awakened to this horror and is creating the needed change. And what better way to sense this subtlety then to be forced to be inward as we were in the pandemic.
I'm seeing a change in children, even the little ones but I'm also seeing it in the adults, even the older ones. The capital Self appears to me to be on the move everywhere and all at once, and the signature of this change is, "I want to be myself." This is a very good process, but it requires the discernment between distracting ourselves from some unknown feeling that we choose not to look at versus staying conscious and trusting that something new is being born. It also requires that we assess the fictions we have embraced to get by. We can distract ourselves or ride the waves of an enormous changing reality. In my opinion, the former leads to a local minimum (a relative low point...math stuff) whereas the latter is the incredible ride into something new, dynamic, and inclusive.
So if we saw the above yellow door in a field of lavender with the saying, “Walk
through the door, your worries behind you, your joys are ahead” would we go
through it or does this now feel slightly outmoded because we already know
what's on the other side?
Happy Valentine’s Day
Everyone
We, and all of
our Children need this.
The yellow door stands alone in a field of lavender at the Terre Bleu Lavender
Farm in Milton, Ontario, Canada. The views of this Note are mine only and
have no relationship to the farm...or the door for that matter ;-).
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