The Magic Of Believing

In many ways life is a lot simpler when you are very young. You know who is in control. You have a pretty clear idea of what they want you to do. You have a strong sense of self and a pressing desire to meet your wants and needs.  The difficulty begins when you come to an impasse built of your needs coming into conflict with your providers belief that they know more about the importance of satisfying those needs than you. Here begins the seed of misrepresentation for self benefit. For example: Crying.

Crying is useful, necessary and conditional. It is communication that works when vocabulary is limited and need is high. There are, of course, a lot of different forms of this emotional display of dissatisfaction. We are familiar with most of them through personal experience. The problem is the action occurs without labeling. There is not a distinct cry for "I'm hungry" or "I'm thirsty" or "Ouch, I hurt myself". What crying elicits in parents is an immediate response, attention and some cuddling, warm milk or both. The satisfaction derived from this activity persuades us that crying is a very useful tool indeed. In a fairly short period of time we find that it is useful for any number of manipulations that result in cuddles and warm milk. O.K., we say, this is worth remembering.

So, crying is great until we are found out and while even being found out does not lessen the overall effectiveness of crying it does grow tiresome and can result in some distressing behavior from the tall people who bring the milk.

As we grow older, begin to wander around the house and participate in activities in our small community we discover the art and magic of believing. This is something that comes from training. We are conditioned to peak out appetites at certain times of the day for convenience and order. When we do that we expect food to magically arrive when the desire for it arises. Television soon finds it's way into the scheme of things and we are presented with a whole new world of desirable things that are made for us which can be delivered to us by the same people who bring the cuddles and milk. And you get them by being adorable or crying or both.

(So here is the problem. I meant to write a short piece on this but I find I am already over the self imposed limit I set for myself so rather that make this too long to conveniently read in one sitting. I'll finish it tomorrow. O.K.?  I hope you aren't disappointed.)  Don't cry!

Herb Ratliff, December 9, 2011, All Rights Reserved