2008 Woodie Awards
A preface to lunch: We stand on shaking ground
James O'Brien
Issue date: 5/1/08 Section: Opinions
I've decided to begin this week with two moralizing haikus.
Some animals watch The other animals fall,
Happy it's not them.
The frog eats the fly.
The frog is suddenly scared-
Prays for its frog soul.
These haikus, besides being quaint and amusing, are meant to illustrate a topic that has been on my mind for awhile - individuality. Please, do not be an individual. I care about you.
Remember the story of George Washington and his honesty regarding that felled cherry tree? Or the Boy Who Cried Wolf? As children, these stories taught us lessons about honesty. They taught this lesson, which our society thought we should know - if you tell the truth, your Dad will hug you. If you lie, wolves will eat you. As we got older, we realized that these scenarios were a bit over the top, but they did teach us a general rule about how society feels about lying. Today we still learn from certain books, but we mostly just sop up the culture around us. We receive a loud and clear message that we are individuals in constant competition for a pot of gold.
This pursuit of an end goal can tire us out, and sometimes we just want to take the weight of being an individual off of our shoulders. When people want to feel like part of a whole rather than a single human being, I think the first thing that they turn to is religion or spirituality (and when I say spirituality, I mean some sort of activity that tends to give us a sense of relative insignificance, and subsequently, peace). It probably seems paradoxical that insignificance can bring us peace, but I think it is a sense that we are part of some greater system at work takes a bit of the pressure off.
Often spirituality can take the form of practicing music or basketball. It could be taking a walk with a mentor. But whatever it is, it helps us to put ourselves in the context of the world as a whole. It helps us to feel small for a moment and still be happy. In terms of my own spirituality, when I was younger, it took the form of Roman Catholicism. Consequently I've come to find how Church teaching can inadvertently lead toward a goal-oriented life. While Catholicism certainly promotes helping your fellow human beings, it also emphasizes that your reward for doing so is individual salvation. We are trained to look for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and completely overlook the rainbow itself. I'm not sure exactly who decided it and when, but American culture, like my Sunday school books, seems to teach us that we need to invent a pot of gold because the rainbow just isn't good enough.
Some animals watch The other animals fall,
Happy it's not them.
The frog eats the fly.
The frog is suddenly scared-
Prays for its frog soul.
These haikus, besides being quaint and amusing, are meant to illustrate a topic that has been on my mind for awhile - individuality. Please, do not be an individual. I care about you.
Remember the story of George Washington and his honesty regarding that felled cherry tree? Or the Boy Who Cried Wolf? As children, these stories taught us lessons about honesty. They taught this lesson, which our society thought we should know - if you tell the truth, your Dad will hug you. If you lie, wolves will eat you. As we got older, we realized that these scenarios were a bit over the top, but they did teach us a general rule about how society feels about lying. Today we still learn from certain books, but we mostly just sop up the culture around us. We receive a loud and clear message that we are individuals in constant competition for a pot of gold.
This pursuit of an end goal can tire us out, and sometimes we just want to take the weight of being an individual off of our shoulders. When people want to feel like part of a whole rather than a single human being, I think the first thing that they turn to is religion or spirituality (and when I say spirituality, I mean some sort of activity that tends to give us a sense of relative insignificance, and subsequently, peace). It probably seems paradoxical that insignificance can bring us peace, but I think it is a sense that we are part of some greater system at work takes a bit of the pressure off.
Often spirituality can take the form of practicing music or basketball. It could be taking a walk with a mentor. But whatever it is, it helps us to put ourselves in the context of the world as a whole. It helps us to feel small for a moment and still be happy. In terms of my own spirituality, when I was younger, it took the form of Roman Catholicism. Consequently I've come to find how Church teaching can inadvertently lead toward a goal-oriented life. While Catholicism certainly promotes helping your fellow human beings, it also emphasizes that your reward for doing so is individual salvation. We are trained to look for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and completely overlook the rainbow itself. I'm not sure exactly who decided it and when, but American culture, like my Sunday school books, seems to teach us that we need to invent a pot of gold because the rainbow just isn't good enough.
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