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| Generations of joy! |
I think it's a huge and dangerous mistake we're making as a society. Shoving our children into lesson after lesson. Telling them what life lesson to learn and then celebrating for too short a time before telling them what next lesson to learn.
I think, though, that it's beautiful, right, and sustainable to encourage, entice, and suggest life lessons. To fan the flames of their natural interest and curiosity while feeding the fire with our kindling of understanding and life learnings. To be part of the circle of life rather than force the straight path to often unhealthy destinations.
Gone are the days of sharing among generations with equal interest and value given to each. I think that's a huge and dangerous mistake. Gone are the days of living among each other with value placed on our connections and abilities to help each other. I think that's a sad and lonely misstep.
Gone are the days. But why? Who says? For whose benefit and pleasure? Our children sit in school while we toil away for money while our grandparents are shoved aside or forgotten; and then there's more toiling for money so we can pay for others to teach and care for our family.
The days are not entirely gone, maybe, but forgotten. Tucked inside our memories while we work hard to make today happen. Buried under schedules and rules and manners and expectations and fear and bank statements.
We don't have to live this way. We could celebrate and embrace the knowledge and tools of today while we shift and change the way we use them. We can appreciate the purpose of our inventions while we leave harmful ones to history books; alive in our memories as proof of the awesome things we can create, and our human nature to hold on too long, and (I hope) our willingness to purposely let go and recreate when proof of pain and harm are consistently present.
I refuse to shove my children through learning after learning and instead choose to encourage, entice, and embrace what we learn together. It's far more fun and pretty easy.
But you know what? It would be even more fun and far easier if you would join me!
Gone are the days, we'll say, when we forced our curious and excited children to sit still and stop following their own interests on a whim. Thank goodness! Gone, we'll exclaim, are the days when we ran around making money for the sake of feeding and housing a family that could easily feed and shelter themselves if the gifts of the earth and our labor hadn't been "owned" by unseen others. Can you believe we did that? Gone, we'll sing with funky beats in hit songs, are the days when we put our loved ones aside because it was just too overwhelming to do the work ourselves. So silly we were, we'll admit, to search for answers mostly in articles and online memes when they were right there, answers and more, in the form of the experiences in our community!
Society will never have it all figured out, we'll never get it all right, because we can't know exactly what effects our actions are having until we've spent some time involved in those actions. And by then we've become easily reliant on those actions.
But that's what we can get right! The willingness and insistence of being honest with ourselves when we see what needs shifting, tweaking, or downright deleted.
So, join me!
Gone are the days when I want to be the weird mom who does it different. Gone are the days when I want to be the weird lady dancing and singing to herself, finding joy in the little things, only so that I can explain myself and my strange ways to well meaning strangers.
Today I want to live in a world that engages in community, connection, and universal considerations.
We can live in that world, if we want to. I promise you, even if it isn't perfect, it's got a lot of fabulous & fantastic to offer!
Also, there's coffee! <----- Powerful Selling Feature.
Hugs, smiles, and love!!
Autism Answers with Tsara Shelton (Facebook)
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| My youngest son and my sister's youngest daughter; learning together. |
