I'd like to talk to you all about why people take things of beauty and destroy them by putting them in cages.
When I was a 7 or 8 year old boy, a second-grader, and living in the country in Minnesota, my school class gave us the assignment to capture butterflies and bring them to school for some sort of Science class experiment.
One of the neighborhood girls, and a classmate of mine, Paula Nelson, and I went out to capture butterflies together. Paula was a nice girl but I didn't have a crush on her like I did with some of the other girls in class.
While chasing butterflies together, we spied a large yellow beauty fluttering about the roof of my house. The butterfly lit upon the rain drainage pipes. I gathered a ladder and started to climb up in order to capture the butterfly with my net.
As I climbed, Paula started chanting, "Mike! You can do it! You can do it!" I began to swell with pride and because of this cheering began to to develop a real liking for Paula...
Everyone wants to feel important and Paula did that for me at the time. I will never forget how I felt at that moment. Someone was truly cheering for me! I was so happy! Even though I was but a small boy, I will never forget Paula for making me feel so good about myself. I have thought about her many times over the years. I hope she found a true soul-mate and is truly happy! Thank you Paula!
In a way, capturing a butterfly and making it "mine" is also a way for children to increase their personal worth and add to their lives "treasures."
But I digress...
I neared the butterfly slowly and took up my net. Paula continued chanting. I swatted my net down upon the beautiful butterfly and... It escaped and fluttered away.
I felt defeated for a moment and felt that I had let Paula down.
A few days later, back at school, I viewed all the captured butterflies the other children brought into the classroom laying dead, side by side, in a row. Some kids had very many of them. I had failed to catch even one. As I viewed the butterflies, it dawned on me that dead butterflies were not beautiful but were actually trash.
All those wings of grace and color and dreams lying there were like a pile of old and dirty crayons: cold, lifeless and used up. Of no use to anyone or anything.
Simply garbage.
The butterflies flying in the blue skies are actually a miracle of grace and give us, children and adults, dreams... Dreams of flying over the mountains and clouds. Dreams of being who we've always wanted to be!
The butterflies laying still and lifeless in a cage give us death and dispair.
For the first time in my life, I was glad that I didn't catch any of those poor butterflies. I wished I had had a time machine and could help all those dead butterflies go back in time where I could have prevented their capture and set them free.
I will never forget that experience.
When my lovely second daughter, Sheena, was a small girl of seven and a second-grader, she and her friends had some nets and were out catching butterflies in the neighborhood near Yokohama. To my great surprise they caught a very many of them and put them in a plastic, see-through clear box that had holes in the top. Even though the box was designed for insects, the holes were so small the butterflies suffocated and died....
The children had so merry a time a capturing these creatures... They were so happy that they brought the butterflies to me for my approval. But I didn't approve. The memories of my time as a child and seeing all those dead butterflies came racing back to me.
I foolishly got angry at the small children.
"These poor butterflies are beautiful and a gift from God when they are flying free. But now that you've captured them, they have died a terrible death in a box. Dead and lifeless they are not beautiful to anyone anymore. They are merely trash to be thrown away. Please, dear children, don't take these beautiful creatures and capture them. They are only beautful if they are flying free."
I learned that lesson as a small child. I was hoping that these small children would learn it too...
I was reminded again of that lesson again last night.
A beautiful girl, with dreams and visions all her own, marries... Then the husband takes her away and puts her in a cage where she suffocates.
In the cage she suffers, cannot breathe, begins to lose herself and is, of course, extremely unhappy.
Life is bad enough without have those who supposedly love us being the source of our misery. Life is bad enough without those, who supposedly love us and want to care for us, putting us in a cage.
Share. Respect. Set free! In this way, and this way only, can you build the one and only true love.
For Sheena, Julie, Wendy and Asami....
This post reminds me of Elmyra Duff, sorta:
ReplyDelete"...She does not really mean to mistreat her pets, she simply doesn't understand the negative effects of her behavior. Each time animals manage to get away from Elmyra and she's unable to get them back, she often cries and wails. ...
[Some of her infamous quotes:]
"I'm gonna hug you and kiss you and love you forever (and never use you up)" (while squeezing Furrball to death)
"I love cats I love kitties, squeeze them into itty bittys!"..."
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Elmyra_Duff
This one is missing, paraphrasing from memory:
"I'm gonna lock you up in a cage and love you forever and ever!"