What Little Boys Are Made Of

We live in an age where it is expected that we have a college education before beginning any career.  Now a mere century ago, that would have caused us to miss much of the beginning of our adulthood.  This is not a speech about education but the loss of our instinctual nature.  Childhood seems to be stretching into a person’s late twenties as we seem to be trading experience for memorizing the facts of what others have experienced long passed.   Education is not only necessary, it is natural second only to knowing how to love and be loved but you have to ask yourself, how have we gotten to the place where it takes so long to begin living?

It is surprising and odd to me in my practice that very often nice polite people walk in but become angry as they begin to dive into themselves.  On the flip side, I have angry cliental that become less angry and calmed upon discovering why they are really angry; angry at the atrocities they have experienced or witnessed.  On a disturbing note, many of these angry cliental are children. Somewhere between the ages of eight or nine, anger begins to well up in them and way too often does not end until they do. I recall one young man as his mother drug him into my office on his therapists referral (neither wanted to be there) hands stuffed deep in his pockets, looking down at the ground and for just a moment I thought his angry stare would open a hole in the floor and he would just disappear. As I went through my routine of what I do, he “politely” listened with head cocked to one side and lips pursed, I had my doubts.  He reluctantly climbed on my table and thirty minutes later when I was telling him I felt he was a very deep thinker and was angry at the injustice going on all around him, his cold stare became a soft gaze as I continued sharing with him that the Angels had shown me he was being bullied at school.  He shared with me he had not told anyone about the bullying out of embarrassment.  I asked him why he was always daydreaming in class and getting in to trouble for not paying attention, and he looked at me, as if he had just met someone with a set of working ears and said, “It is not that I am not listening, I am listening to some of it, but the rest of the time I am trying to see how it applies to my life.   I sure do learn a lot from children with no education who are failing school.   

I encouraged that young man to continue thinking and not become self destructive because adults did not understand him and for that matter his peers. He sat on the edge of my table his angry face completely gone and now looked at me almost with a sneering grin as if he had just figured out we were both international spies and had cracked a code and he sweetly said to me, ”You know what? You are really smart.”  I will never forget him and I hope he never forgets himself.

C.S. Lewis wrote that the only stupid question is one in which you know there is no answer to.   And I have learned that not only are questions typically statements in disguise, if you ask a question properly, it will answer itself.  Think about that and then think again.  In fact sit and have a good daydream. Don’t remember how?  Here is a hint you don’t need a book, or a teacher, or a classroom, an electrical outlet or batteries, you only need yourself.

Learning is crucial, and a strong base of knowledge is like a well stocked pantry but when it comes time to make a meal if you don’t know how to put it all together you will not have much to offer.  Some of the most famous dishes were created from being out of something and improvising, necessity is the mother of invention after all.  The point here is if we continue to argue our limitations, then that is what we will have and we will be limited, in thought and in action.  Thinking is not a crime. Thinking is having a conversation with yourself and sometimes even God drops in. You are your own best friend.  Never stop learning, never stop dreaming, and never stop questioning the answers.  We really do need to redefine childhood, because children are taking this to heart and waiting a very long time before they feel they have what they need to contribute.   We need to shine down on them like the sun and encourage them to cultivate their thoughts and allow them to grow into the world and fill in the holes we have left. Likewise as adults we too must find the courage to burst through our own darkness and see there is an alternate reality just an inch away.   If we are to survive as a society and ultimately evolve into the peaceful existence we all say we want, than we must relearn and retrain ourselves to be intuitive feeling thinking creatures like we were once upon a time…
when we did not know so much…       ~Cynthia