Contrary to popular belief, I am actually an extremely classy broad. One of the classiest I dare say. I enjoy a fine wine, a strong cheese, an old map, leather-bound books, a good magnifying glass... you get my drift. And don't even get me started on libraries. Libraries are one of my greatest passions in life. The older and mustier the better. Perhaps my love of libraries stemmed from the famous scene in Beauty and the Beast-where Belle is swinging on a ladder over floor-to-ceiling books, or from my semester abroad in Paris, or perhaps it started in the 6th grade when I let R.J. Lemere go up my shirt in our middle school library. Your guess is as good as mine. My point is, I'm bringing some class into the lives of my readers starting today.
During one of my daily trips to our local book store, I picked up one of those sad self-help books that any reasonable person would deny reading. Well, I picked it up and read it proudly (OK I had it hidden within another book), but I found a little story I think we can all learn from... Enjoy...
It was a curious thing. Robert had filled the bathtub and put the fish in the tub, so he could clean the tank. After he'd scrubbed the film from the small walls of their make-believe deep, he went to retrieve them. He was astonished to find that, though they had the entire tub to swim in, they were huddled in a small area the size of their tank. There was nothing containing them, nothing holding them back. Why wouldn't they dart about freely? What had life in the tank done to their natural ability to swim?
This quiet yet stark moment stayed with us both for a long time. We couldn't help but see those little fish going nowhere but into themselves. We now had a life-in-the-tank lens on the world and wondered daily, In what ways are we like them? In what ways do we go nowhere but into ourselves? In what ways do we shrink our world so as to not to feel the press of our own self-imposed captivity?
Life in the tank made me think of how we are raised at home and in school. It made me think of being told that certain jobs are not acceptable and that certain jobs are out of reach, of being schooled to live a certain way, of being trained to think that only practical things are possible, of being warned over and over that life outside of the tank of our values is risky and dangerous.
I began to see just how much we were taught as children to fear life outside of the tank. As a father, Robert began to question if we was preparing his children for life in the tank or life in the uncontrollable world.
It makes me wonder now, in middle age, if being spontaneous and kind and curious are all parts of our natural abilities to swim. Each time I hesitate to do the unplanned or unexpected, or hesitate to reach and help another, or hesitate to inquire into something I know nothing about, each time I ignore the impulse to run in the rain or call you up just to say I Love You- I wonder, Am I turning on myself, swimming safely in the middle of the tub?
No comments:
Post a Comment