Skip to main content

ambassadors

i was watching some of the director's commentary on the dvd of laberinto del fauno the other night (after watching the movie for the 3rd time), and guillermo del toro was talking about the idea that children are ambassadors from another culture (and have perfect personalities until we screw them up, essentially) and we can learn so much from them. how different our world would be if everyone thought and acted so. i know this, but it's easy to forget when we get dragged down by the day-to-day of things. i'd like to become more mindful of this in my teaching practice. it's easy to forget how marvelous they really are and turn things into a power struggle as we so often do with things in life when we feel we must control them rather than cede to their being-ness.

one of my favorite quotes is by jung -

'where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. the one is the shadow of the other.'


he was talking about other things than our relationship as adults with children, but it applies as well there as anywhere. in fact, the opression of the child is the last battlefield at which we've yet to arrive. struggles for the liberation of almost every class of person have been fought, except for that of the child.

we need to do it for them, because they're the ambassadors of the future, and they can't do it without our help. we owe it to them, and ourselves, and our world.

m

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

May your children's children have painful bunions!

So I was sitting with my tired feet being gurgled in the bubbling jets of a cheap vietnamese manicure shop pedicure chair when I look over to see some preppie chick giving the pedicure girl a hard time. She was apparently unhappy with the level of exfoliation her stupid tootsies had recieved. Fine. Well, first of all, you are paying for what is the equivalent of a happy meal in the scheme of the grand pedicure menu, bitch, so what do you want? But beyond that ... Her tone was so disdainful and contemptuous, and the pedicure gal handled it so graciously ... Just looking at her sitting there at the feet of this ho-bag, massaging her callouses with the pumice stone one more time, trying to get it right, to make the girl happy, I was SHAKING in anger by the time the whole scene played out and the check was practically THROWN at the poor woman. SHAKING. I mean, okay - you're unhappy with the services you received. You complain. Acceptable. Fine. But for fuck's sake you can speak to ...
8 comments
Read more

here i go again

it seems as though i tend to take up writing again, when i do, in spring.  i don't know that i have any particular reading of this observation, it's just something i noticed.  maybe something about renewal and starting fresh, starting over? i am sitting in my living room and the windows are open and it's a bit chilly but the fresh air feels good.  i have a blanket on my legs and i am sitting cross-legged on a chair.  it's funny to think about writing this blog from this place, this here-now, when i have written it in other places before.  when i think about this blog, it's as though i give it a particular time-space all its own, but i also associate it strongly with the apartment where i lived when it all began.  which feels (and i guess sort of is) a lifetime ago.  i feel like a completely different person, this almost-ten-years-in-the-future me.  back to that catch-up conundrum.  how to explain how different i am now, and all that's happe...
4 comments
Read more

You Tremble at the Edge of Gone

The first time I saw D was my first day back at school the first semester of my sophomore year in college. When I opened the door (after my last two roommates, dreading who or what I might find when I entered), I saw her squinting at me from against the radiator at the far wall of the tiny rectangle that was our dorm room, smoking a Marlboro Light 100. I'll never forget the brand she smoked. They fit her. They were slender and inconspicuous, the box long and cream and white and somehow common but sophisticated. I don't know what it was, and I'm trying to remember it now - it frustrates me that I can't - that told me in an instant that we were kindred spirits. She was beautiful, slender, native american. She had almond eyes and high cheekbones and long brown hair ... we shared a sort of eclectically funky style. She was fond of loosely woven brown sweaters and a sort of rust colored lipstick that brought out her eyes, hair, skin ... she wore too much makeup to cover old ...
6 comments
Read more