Wish I could sometimes go back to sleep when that happens, instead of thinking. But, thinking just won’t shut off then. It’s ok. Most of that, I’ve thought before. It’s about skin. We all have skin. Doesn’t matter what color it is, it holds all the essence of our selves inside, and seldom lets any of it really leak out. Oh, when we are young, yes, we dare to speak thoughts, and often get ridiculed, or reminded that of course, everyone has silly thoughts, and then we do more research, unless we are stubbornly holding onto our errant thoughts as though they were strongly held beliefs. But, for the most part, by the time we’ve reached middle age, we look back on our earlier foolishness, and how we tried on thoughts, opinions, and ideas, and either through trial and error, or long experience and learning from living, we reject them soundly.
Astonishing that in this day and age, it’s verboten, not allowed, forbidden to do the same. How can we grow? How can we know what we haven’t learned? How can we discover what is true if we can’t explore ideas, talk about thoughts and dreams and ideas freely?
This sack of skin, this shield, this protective layer can be trained to keep out germs and other bacterial crap, and protect the body, but it’s permeable to ideas, words, notions, thoughts of others, and these days, the young are so cheated out of natural opportunities to share speculations, suppositions, bits of experiences, among themselves, they turn instead to a tiny box of lunatic fringe ideation pumped out by tiktok or whatever silly app they use on their phones, and absorb the weirdest notions, while questioning, questioning, and questioning not the world, not their friend, but themselves, and doing it with such a critical eye, they mutilate themselves in the name of conforming, far too often.
I’m glad I grew up at a time when we could talk about things among ourselves, and not sit together staring at our little boxes instead. I’d rather not be labeled bigot, racist, white supremacist, woke, lunatic fringe, conspiracy theorist because I “tried on” an idea, entertained a thought, examined a situation from more than one side. I fear for my grandchildren, each a treasure and blessing sent by a loving God. I fear for my children who will be here long after I’m gone watching society turn into something other than good old America.
We were once free here. Are we now?