I fell in love this morning.
I fell in love with my two year old little girl this morning.
She broke my heart too.
Don't get me wrong. I respect Oprah Winfrey quite a lot. She is a self made woman who has helped so many people in the world. She has single handedly become a force in so many areas of life its senseless to even name a few. BUT. I can not stand the touchy feely people who are her fans, are her studio audience and her millions of TV viewers. All of them probably hang on every dripping word she utters and quote her meticulously and swoon at her mention.
Bleh, goich, uch, stick a finger down your throat, agh gag me with a spoon com padre. They are so, so, so, TOUCHY FEELY. phoi. No, Stay away from me. No, you can not stroke me. Stay away I say, go over there. No, don't come near me. In fact don't even look at me.
So then, how did it happen that I find myself reading the ULTIMATE touchy feely book. How did it happen? Its from 1990, its probably way out of date too. I ll tell you. I really had nothing else to read. I don't have a library card and there aren't many books for me in the local branch anyway and I am not of the Nook, Niche, Fire, Kindle generation to read a book on the computer (even though my good friends Mother is a newly committed book reader on Kindle, so, lame excuse from me) and I don't feel like reading my Isaac Singer 600 page short story book for the tenth time. So the only book left in my collection here unread was... wait for it, "Healing your Aloneness: Finding Love and Wholeness Through your Inner Child" With sentences such as: "The natural human state is a heart that is filled to the brim with love and light", and "We are each being challenged to choose between love, peace and life or fear, war and death." Oh goodness. I think I ll take the fear, war and death just so I won`t have to listen to you. Please turn up the volume on my Cannibal Corpse record to 11. Ahhhh, death metal, that's better.
And then I get to the intro sentence in chapter two: "The way we were treated as small children is the way we treat ourselves the rest of our life." And, "Because we were not truly valued as children.." Furthermore that, "It attempts to control the child by telling it what it `should` or `should not` do and all the bad things that will happen if it doesn't do it `right`". And BAM. I had to ask myself, "am I valuing my little child? Is she important? Or is she just a vessel that is meant to be filled up with my so called knowledge?" Where is my wisdom? I was turning into the authoritarian dictator taking care of her and just thought of her as an empty head, two year old who had to have sense, her maturity installed. Well you know what? That's not good. That isn't going to help her in later life. In fact the way I am treating her, she will always need to be told, instructed and filled by someone with "knowledge" for the rest of her life. She will be dependent on people telling her how to do it instead of her taking it apart and exploring it herself and figuring it out. That is no way for creativity and wisdom to develop. I just have been taking too many things away from her because she wasn't using them correctly. Granted, a two year old wielding a pair of scissors with the point looking to go through someones eye should have them taken away, but not the little pictures or puzzle pieces or modeling dough or little animal stickers. And she should be told, "this is how you hold the scissors, with the point held down with your hand covering the point". The problem is that she is two years old. She isn't big enough to matter. She has nothing important to say and nothing worth listening to as Louis CK comedian has said (I ll find his quote). And she is too small to win. Her older sister will always beat her these days in the memory card game and put together the puzzle faster and get to stay overnight at her friends house, while this little two year old, is, well, too small. I don`t want her to grow up not thinking she is valued or important. Even when she is two years old.
It says in my oh so touchy feely book that little children always want to be hugged, and its true. My little two year old will always cry when I take something away from her. Then after five minutes of crying she asks for a hug. In my opinion its because she wants to re affirm that we still love. But I think she still has to fight hard to feel important. It`s tough when you are the youngest. I know. I ve been hugging her, but I have to hunker down and VALUE her more and let her know that even though she is a little tiny girl, she is important.
Oh, goodness, some of this wet stuff is coming out of my eye. You silly goose, touchy, feely person, go over there. Go to the corner. Stop this Oprah wannabe posing.
On top of all this heart rendering introspection I have had, on top of that, my little girl cried hard for me this morning when I was leaving to go to work. I had been with her from 7.30am till 10.30am then her Mother came back and I had to be at work at 11am. She cried hard. For me! She wouldn't let me leave the apartment. She wouldn't let me close the elevator door, she wanted me to stay home. I fell in love with her, and my heart was broken at the same time. I was late for work, but, aw, forget that, I'm in love.
