So I am sitting here once again...quite bored actually.....thinking of some of the things I have missed in life. Besides the obvious...my lost love....who is out there in Arizona. Or my long lost career as an officer of the realm. Or of the many cool muscle cars I have owned over the years. Or of the great trips my family would take in the rugged mountains of Idaho. I think that besides those things...I miss childhood the most. Why? Because it was a time of innocense....a time before we became jaded by the world and society around us.
We had little to ponder back then.....just school chums.....girlfriends....games....and family. Oh sure, there were the odd chores to do....but I grew up on farms in rural Idaho...so that work was expected. I would really have hated it not to grow up with pets and animals. I feel sad for today's inner city youth who will never experience what farm life is about. I was lucky my parents loved the outdoors....because I got to see a lot of the rugged Rocky mountains. Camping, fishing, swimming, boating, hiking and exploring were all part of the package. It is where I learned to hunt.....for food....not for pure sport. It was a great time in my life.
As time passed though....things became much more complicated. Life would start to bear down. Work, relationships and society all became much more difficult. The real world would steal the inner child from you in a wink of an eye. Take relationships for example.
As I look around now....how many tv shows....magazines....and societal norms, place the emphasis on self gratification and just getting "laid". While it is true that it can be a most satisfying experience....should it be the prime directive? I think not. How many people I have ran across in my travels who are all wacked out because they have been repeatedly used and abused by a partner...a great deal of them, to be sure. I am no stranger to this vicious cycle.....as this is the life that occupies the mind of contemporary America, western civilization.....and indeed, the world. To what end would this construct? I don't know...but it probably can't be good. Where is the inner child in me....I wonder. Lost in time.....back before the days of the real world....of capitalism unrestrained. Back before the fall of morality.
And so it is that I yearn for the times of old.....when I was a child still.....before reality set in. That is the beautiful thing about love...it can recapture that childhood at any time, place or age.
It can lift the spirit when all else has failed....when the light is dim and friends are no where to be found. There can always be one true friend, soulmate, lover, helper and crutch in which to depend.
That is the power of love. It is something that I fear we are losing in the troubled times of the future. Shallowness, greed, selfishness, fear and power are destroying the fabric which binds the soul of humanity. I can see it with each passing year....I can feel it within my being.....I can know it by the misery of which humanity continues to suffer. It is our darkest legacy. Society may collapse under the jack boots of the police state....of big brother....of the "benevolent" care and concern of the regime. But that will not be my fate....so long as I remember who I am, where I came from and my place in the order of the world. I am human....I have a spirit....I make mistakes.....I am a child still.
