American Reality - A Climb Toward Grace
American
My husband and I took our ten year old daughter for a tour of Ellis Island. We watched a documentary where tired immigrants debarked from large freighters carrying ragged bags. Curious, my daughter turned to me and asked, "Who are the real Americans?" I responded thoughtfully, "I suppose the Native American Indian." "What happened to them?" she asked. This time I was silent, unsure of how to express the truth. Finally I responded, "They lived wanting what every American dreams of: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
However, as vigorously as Americans stand for those values, we are still a work in progress. What is reality for the average American? The perception is infinite.
Doris Day and Rock Hudson Leave it to Beaver Oprah Nip/Tuck Will and Grace Six Feet Under The Sopranos Sex and the City Passion of the Christ The Da Vinci Code The Wizard of Oz 9/11 The Holocaust The Ten Commandments The Beatles Pattie Hearst Jon Benet
THE MYTH Modern physics claims that reality is an illusion. Every person lives within the holograph of their unique perception and ideology. Therefore, what "Americans" are we referring to in this essay on reality? Conservative, Republican, Liberal, Jew, Muslim, Catholic, Irish, Italian, Latin, African-American, Polish? Our interpretations influence what we believe is true in our pursuit of peace and love. Reality is THE big game hunt! And it depends on who is playing.
The Beatles sang Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds, which musically immortalized the eastern philosophy of Maya1 - and we soared with the magical butterfly through the mystical curtain, past the illusion of physical reality. What did Americans hunger for as they hung on to Lucy's toe? The perfect life, the right and good God, the perfect planet? Our denial lies in the idealization of perfection which distorts the forgotten wisdom that brought our ancestors to America in the first place. That nirvana exists in the acceptance of our flawed and imperfect dreams.
Like the walrus, we swim around in the dark. We are running, flying and leaping to find the fountain of youth. As we attempt to escape our mortality, our educational system continues to fail our children: boredom is diagnosed as attention deficit, Ritalin and anti-depressants as the cure. We teach answers for SAT scores, rather than inspire vision and innovation.
The question of reality is akin to pondering if Alice actually fell down the Rabbit Hole. Today, Oprah is the last word in American reality. What she dictates to read is what Americans read. Is reality skewed by Hollywood and television-land?
THE BLUEPRINT OF MY PERCEPTION Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, I was taught to be the Jewish geisha daughter. I watched my mother tease her platinum hair high until it twisted her into a rage. My mother dreamed Hollywood's dreams and drove a pink Cadillac. My father built a catering business from the dust of the earth and prospered in the streets of Brooklyn. He believed if my genitals were different than his, I was supposed to be subservient to his needs! My parent's American Dream was the streets paved in gold. In Yiddish, my grandmother's native tongue, the "golden medinah" - the land of religious, political and economic opportunity.
My neighborhood was a cauldron of different cultures and religions. At age ten, the Irish hoodlum girls called me a Christ killer. Scared, the red-headed toughies would beat me to a pulp or throw me into an oven. My Jewish survival fought back, "Christ would never say that!" I was a simple American slurping my grandmother's matzo ball soup. With my innocence attacked, I was forever terrorized.
SOCIETY, RELIGION & POLITICS The pendulum swings from decade to decade according to corporate, religious and government institutions that set the standards of how we are supposed to live. We have landed in a reality where mankind is more technologically advanced than versed in the fine art of being human.
Hollywood starlets are skinnier than match sticks. That represents beauty in our present society? We want inner beauty and wisdom, but we just can't keep away from the plastic surgeon's knife.
Our historical legacy lends itself to hypocrisy. The Fifties: Doris and Rock, thousands of American women married "Rock" and emulated the archetype of the virginal, blue-eyed beauty. The Sixties: free love, give peace a chance. The seventies: Vietnam war protests, Elvis is King or Christ? Gloria Steinem and Pattie Hearst: brainwashed, abducted or freed from political and religious frigidity? The Eighties: clergymen are secretly molesting choir boys? The Nineties: pro-choice or baby killers? Gay marriages and single parent homes an option? In our current millennium our choices have expanded from columns A-Z.
America is a montage of colliding cultures and morals; each group having their own lobby in Washington. Mick Jagger's lyrics: "You can't always get what you want, you get what you need?" Do we need umpteen facelifts? Seven year olds dressed up as movie queens seductively prancing across a stage; later found murdered and raped. Childhood stars overdosing and dying? Botox, the new addiction because thirty year olds are terrified of being fifty years old?
The world is angry; bombs are exploding at our doorsteps. Our current political view is saving the world by killing and torturing thousands, as a moral justification of good against evil. Then government elites brush shoulders with the "evil" enemy because oil is a much-needed commodity. Terrorists now build their cells like ants in our backyards.
America: sex, politics and lies; Clinton swore he did not have sex with that woman! Much the same with Thomas Jefferson who kept his love for slave women a secret. And will we ever know the truth about Marilyn Monroe's death and her entanglement with the Kennedy brothers? Why then are we astonished that our children are shooting children, fifteen year olds are having internet sex and mothers are killing their babies? Cover-up is an American pastime in the pursuit of happiness.
COMMERCIALISM: THE BIGGEST CULT The Food and Drug Administration believes what people don't know won't hurt them. Go ahead and put hormones in chickens and dog poop in chop meat. What the hell? We put coke in the coke and chemicals in our Thanksgiving turkey. And how long did it take cigarette conglomerate Philip Morris to come clean about lung cancer and tobacco?
Today, pharmaceutical companies are national drug dealers. We are forced to buy costly prescriptions that our insurance won't cover unless you pay high premiums, all to keep us thin, hormonally balanced, lower our cholesterol and keep our sanity intact. Let's not forget these drugs may kill our sex drive or our emotions, cause cancer and liver disease and maybe give you a blood clot in the brain.
Our political and corporate leaders subliminally influence the masses through media hype to purchase perfumes, low-fat subs, lemon smelling detergents, promising cleaner minds, bodies and better sex. Then we can live happily ever after on Prozac, numbed-out to how terrified we feel.
THE PARADOX Reality or fantasy? The seed that grows a tree, the moonlight, the sun's rays, a child's laughter, a cat's meow, Dr. Seuss, Peter Pan; think beautiful thoughts and you can fly. By whose authority does reality exist?
Although our American heroes - Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt and Jack Kennedy, to name a few - all had human flaws, they followed their dream. It is indeed the land of opportunity. Every American has a crack at breaking the glass ceiling.
But alas, we can fly a man to the moon, but we still cannot stop racism, hatred and bigotry. Shakespeare and the Greeks understood the nature of reality because they understood the trappings of the psyche. The ancients walked with gods and goddesses, captive to their whimsical callings. The sin in the Garden deemed humans as the enemy of God. However, according biblical mythology the sins of jealousy, sloth, greed, and anger are parts of the dark night of the soul, to transform and heal the psyche. They are the emotional guides to enlightened wisdom. Weren't Abraham and Christ spiritually challenged? Will Americans sacrifice their iPods and BlackBerrys in order to feel the pain of remembrance?
EPILOGUE If we view ourselves as pieces of a scattered whole struggling toward the "Greater Good," then we can each contribute to our forefathers' vision of equality. Then the ancient transition of the 'dark night of the soul' can emerge to a better end. The pain of separation can be a catalyst to reach a higher plane. That would be our grasp on reality and truly the American dream - to help one another as allies instead of enemies!
We can embody the fable where the blind men all claimed to know the nature of an elephant; "it is the ear, it is the tail, it is the trunk!" If they suddenly awakened, at that moment of realization they would know, "that all men and women are created equal. That is what Americans strive for, lose their way and then find a way back to THEIR CLIMB TOWARD GRACE.
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