Monsters of the ID

In the news everybody blames everybody else for what is wrong with this world. The real culprit is mankind's subconscious, the Id. There are monsters that bypass the conscious mind where most people have learned to deal with injustice, racism, and prejudice -- or at least that is what we tell ourselves. We are horrified by the savage and brutal treatment of women and children -- out loud and in public -- but revert to our pernicious and un-enlightened roots of ourselves where we push women and children aside as we, the males of the species, stride to the forefront to be tended to. After all, women and children being kicked and pushed aside as we trample on them and shove them aside is the way the world works. The strongest publicly claim that we stoop down and help the weaker to safer and more stable/secure positions. The strongest publicly claim they would take a bullet for a loved one, throw themselves in front of danger, and would lay down their lives, sacrifice a limb, give up their place in line so that women and children can be saved even if it means the strongest take the fall or give up their lives to make the future safe for women and children. Isn't that why women and children get the seats in rescue vehicles first? Isn't that what men tell themselves when asked for a poll or hold up their hands to be counted for their contribution to the future?

It's a lie.

In the secret recesses of the human heart -- or in the midst of the worst danger -- the truth comes out. Men shove women and children aside as they make a bee line for the safest and best seats in the rescue vehicles. They will not be left behind. As long as they survive, all is well with the world -- and with them. If the women and children die, so what? After all, they say when it is all over, at this point what does it matter? The women and children are dead and nothing these strong and virile men can do will ever bring them back. Dead is dead. At least when the cameras are rolling and their perfidious actions are done. If you don't see it on the news or in some edited footage that fits on the 11 PM news, you believe what you see. Their crocodile tears are real and the mangled, bloody, and dead bodies remain while they weep an ocean of tears and claim, "If only I could have saved them," or maybe, "Why God? They were so innocent, so precious. Why not take me instead?"

No one saw them as they shoved the weaker innocents aside. All that is left is the record of their tears and remorse and their dumbfounded shock at the injustice of it all. Oscar winners all.

As long as they survived, all that matters is the record. No one needs to know the truth as it is only the truth as they tell it while talking out of both sides of their mouths.

Somewhere inside their minds they may even believe their distress is real. The Id, the subconscious part of their minds, is silent, has submerged once again to the depths of the mind and has been replaced by that anguished cry, "Why God?" 

I recently saw a news report where a liberal woman talked about how her husband, one of the first volunteers going to the aid of Syrian refugees in Greece had changed when he came back from refugees. He spoke about how strong, virile young men shoved injured and drowning women and children aside while these young men surged to the front of the line, ignoring the calls for help and the drowning innocents as they helped themselves first. After all, to their minds, if not to the liberal volunteers' minds, women and children were expendable. They were not.

Here in the western world, we abhor and condemn such blatant disregard for the innocent and we say so loudly and often -- in public or in front of our friends and neighbors. Who knows what we really feel when everyone is gone and we are left alone or when we fall asleep and the subconscious takes the stage? Do all of our prejudices and indiscreet opinions surge forth as we imagine the worst? Do the monsters inside of all of us take over and revel in the deaths, blood, and savagery that take center stage? Do the monsters hidden in our subconscious gibber with unholy glee once the lights are off and the stage is open and waiting?

I was reminded of what lies inside of the most generous and helpful of us hidden in the deepest recesses of the subconscious mind as I watched an old favorite science fiction movie, Forbidden Planet,  with Walter Pigeon, Anne Frances, and Leslie Nielsen. Doctor Morbius warned the rescue ship not to land as he would not be responsible for their safety. Morbius did not need their assistance and would not welcome them if the crew refused to heed his warnings.

Morbius had been alone on Altair IV for 20 years with only his work and his daughter for company. He remember what had happened to the rest of the crew of the Bellerophon. They had died at the hands of some unknown and immensely powerful force that resided on Altair IV.

The crew landed and the powerful invisible monster killed some of the crew when it became apparent that the captain, Leslie Nielsen, was determined to take Morbius back to Earth to inform the authorities what had happened to the crew of the Bellerophon and what he had learned of the original inhabitants, the Krell. Morbius refused to share his findings and was adamantly opposed to returning to Earth. That is when the attacks began.

Not even the immense power at the crew's disposal could stop the invisible monster stalking and killing them. Morbius urged the captain and his crew to take off and avoid further blood shed. The captain refused. Worst of all, Morbius's daughter, Altaira, was determined to go to Earth with the crew, sealing her fate and putting her in serious danger. Morbius begged his daughter to change her mind, but her fate was sealed.

The powerful invisible monster attacked Morbius, the captain, and Altaira at Morbius's home. When Morbius ordered Robby the robot to stop the monster, even after the ship's doctor told Morbius that he, Morbius, was the source of the danger, Robby the robot shut down, caught in a logic conflict programmed into him not to harm people. Even with further proof that the monster was a product of Morbius's subconscious, the same fate that the Krell discovered when they built the pinnacle of their science and technology and programmed a computer that work with the power of the mind, ending their technologically marvelous achievements in a day and a night, leaving on the products of their genius in the form of the machine encompassing more than a 40-mile square and plunging to the very depths of the core of the planet behind as evidence of their achievement.

The primitive subconscious mind teemed with their prejudices, fears, and imagination was unleashed by the power of their machines and spelled the end of their existence 200,000 years before the Bellerophon landed and Morbius discovered the power, boosted his IQ, and learned to access their machines. Morbius's subconscious mind was unleashed, given ultimate power, and murdered all who opposed him. Unstoppable and relentless in his pursuit of knowledge, the monsters of Morbius's Id were unleashed and he was left alone with his innocent daughter to live a life free of other people until Nielsen's crew landed on Altair IV and urged the monsters in Morbius's subconscious mind to life.

The only way to stop the slaughter and devastation was to blow up the planet and thus the Krell technology left behind.

The monsters of the Id are powerful and frightening and so much easier to see when we are faced with them in fictions and a lot less visible when they are too close to us. We see the same monsters when Babylon 5 was on TV when a university professor turned archaeologist enlists Dr. Steven Franklin's assistance in helping him to figure out what he found on Ikarra VII. It was organic technology, far advanced compared to what the Earth had, mirroring the technological advances of the Vorlon's that would propel Earth technology ahead -- far ahead.

The problem was that the technology bonded with the professor's assistant, who was willing to murder to further the advance of knowledge and science, setting loose the Ikarrans' doomsday weapon and endangering all life on Babylon 5 because the inhabitants of hundreds of worlds and civilizations were not pure Ikarran as determined thousands of years ago by Ikarran priests and politicians. The monsters of the Ikarran Id embodied in the organic technology and originating with the scientist who built the doomsday weapon were incompatible with the millions of aliens living on Babylon 5. After all, the Ikarrans died out a million years ago so pure Ikarran blood no longer existed and therefore all life was to be destroyed.

This scenario of perfection and purity has been the central theme of literature for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts for a very long time and the ideal of purity is being played out before us right now in Europe and the Western world, and in fact all over the planet, today, right now. The measurement is determined by religion and inadequately  protected by law. Religion has done a very poor job of protecting and creating peace because the rules set for by different religions are wholly incompatible with peace as long as the monsters of the Id remain inside us and unknown to the more enlightened wisdom of the evolution of humanity. Muslims are stuck in the 7th century. Christians are stuck in an ever changing kaleidoscope of values and ethics that seldom keeps pace with modern sensibilities. The Jews do a better job of matching intent with power and generosity towards others. Buddhists with their long history of anti-violence and peaceful enlightenment lag are overturned by the origins of the people who have converted or lived their whole lives with the Buddhist teachings and succumb inevitably to the monsters of the Id. No religion currently practiced on this planet at this point in time is without its flaws and all are moot in the face of the subconscious where the monsters of the Id dwell and flourish hidden in the darkness.

Blacks blame whites and whites blame blacks. Browns blame browns and everybody blames everybody else. We try our best to live good lives keeping the touchstone of religion in the forefront, but religions made by man are also corrupted by man depending on who has the most power, the most insight, the most control and all religions made by man and purportedly based on the word of god or Allah or Jehovah, Jesus Christ, or Buddha are still the work of man and thus subject to revision and interpretation. There are moderate Muslims and there are extremist Muslims. The same is true of Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, native Americans, and every version of religion that begin and end with man. The stories abound about the origins of religion, but ultimately it is mankind writing the words down and mankind following the dictates with less and greater success. Miracles happen and are reportedly of the deity [insert name here] and thus sacrosanct . . . as long as the deity conforms with your personal views . . . and is untouched by the most basic of human emotions or view or mind or thoughts or dreams or imagination. The only thing left is LOVE.

LOVE is at the heart of all mankind and trumps everything else. Wherever you begin, if the answer is not LOVE then the answer is wrong and will end in tears and often death.

Look at a situation where you and your opponent disagree. Whatever your position, the moment you offer violence instead of listening and working together, you have failed. Even if it is an idea you disagree about or a possession you both contend over, the moment you refuse the option of sharing or using the possession or looking at the idea from each other's viewpoint, you have failed. It may seem successful if you end up with the item or the idea in contention, but you are not successful. If you win by resorting to struggling over possession or having the upper hand -- or the moral high ground -- you lose. You have failed.

The moment you lie or obfuscate or keep things to yourself, you lose. You have failed.

The moment you default to quoting chapter and verse from your religious book of choice to prove you are right and they are wrong, you lose. You have failed.

Whatever triumph you feel is fleeting. You have already lost. You have failed.

If the end result deviates by an amoeba's cell, you have failed. You lost.

LOVE is the only answer, the only law, and the only success in life.

There is no first in LOVE.  There is no choice if LOVE is at the heart. There is no wrong if there is LOVE. Ultimately, LOVE is the only answer, the only response, the only success. There are no winners and no losers when LOVE is at the heart and soul.

The rest is Ego and the broad road to allow the monsters of the Id to take control and destroy everything.

LOVE is the only answer.

Whatever deviates from LOVE is failure and you have lost. 

We cannot afford purity. The only thing we can afford is LOVE.

That is all. Disperse.

Equality of Outcome

Growing up, my mother demanded that everything be equal for her children. Everything must cost the same for birthdays and Xmas for all four of us. If she spent $100 on spend the same amount on each of the other three. That was her version of equality. She was adamant on everything being equal for all four of us, but mostly because of me; I'm adopted and the other three were her biological children. None of them would have existed, as far as Mom saw it, if she had not adopted me since she had failed to deliver a living child before I was adopted. That was, as her doctor pointed out, the outcome of adopting when failure to bear and deliver a child is the case. Her doctor promised her that she needed to develop a mother's instinct before she could conceive and bear a living child. I was the way to develop her mother's instinct . . . or at least that is how she convinced my mother, her sister-in-law, to give up the child she carried in her womb when she arrived from Michigan after her divorce on the back of her older brother's motorcycle to live with her other older brother (my dad) and her sister-in-law (Mom who had not been successful in bearing the children she so desperately wanted . . . and needed).

My birth mother didn't renege on her promise even after she became engaged to Dewey because she was a woman of her word. She had promised her child (me) to her brother and his wife and, since she had already given birth twice, could have more children. It should be noted that she gave up her first child, a child conceived when her uncle raped her, to one of her husband's relatives before she conceived me after the divorce and before he obtained a Catholic divorce (annulment) in order to marry his second wife, a woman with whom he had nine children and who never knew about me . . . or so I have been told. I never asked him since I never knew him and was urged to let sleeping dogs lie.

The point is that Mom has decided when the other three children came along that we would all be treated equally, hence the way she gave gifts to us. What she couldn't control was how friends would give us all presents when they came to our birthday parties, but she had a way to fix that too. Oftentimes we (meaning I) got duplicate gifts. Mom decided that duplicate gifts would be given to my siblings while I kept one of the duplicates because it was my birthday gift after all. All of my duplicates went to my sister who was born a year and nine months after I was adopted, leaving me with one gift and my sister with all of the duplicates to be fair to her even though it was not her birthday. Her birthday was in November and I did not get any of her duplicate gifts because it wasn't my birthday. I didn't get any of my brother's duplicate gifts either (he kept them all because he was a boy) nor did I get any of my youngest sister's duplicates, but then neither did my brother or other sister either. They were too mature and would not be treated like the baby.

We all got clothes at the same time, the same number of items for each of us, but seldom (never) the same quality or style. We'd have been equal if we had all gone to the same school and wore uniforms, which would have happened if we had actually become Catholics and gone to Catholic school, but (thankfully) that didn't happen. The same amount of money was spent on birthdays and Xmas until we reached high school for my brother and older sister and me and we began to develop different talents and tastes. Jimmy kept getting Hot Wheels cars and accessories and my sister and I outgrew dolls, moving into clothes for my sister and art supplies for me.

As we grew up and moved into our adult lives, birthdays and Xmas gifts remained the same dollar amount spent for each of us, or at least that is what I was told since I spent many birthdays and Xmases far away from the others. Mom made a point to assure me that I was treated the same as the other three even though I was clear across the country and they all remained close to home. At least Mom and Dad came to visit me in Utah when they drove to California to see Jimmy off on his first long distance Navy cruise or to discuss his wedding plans when he decided to get married to his girlfriend's best friend when his girlfriend turned him down. He was on a deadline and had to follow through and get married on his 23rd birthday even though he wasn't marrying the girl of his choice. He was following in Dad's footsteps no matter what. It didn't matter that Bobbie accepted him after he broke up with Leslie who had refused to marry him as long as Bobbie would marry him on his 23rd birthday. Nothing else mattered. One girl was as good as another. They were equal because they had been best friends, a fact he lived to regret a couple of decades later. I guess the equality tree didn't fall far from the designer of equality of outcome.

Mom's quality of outcome was evident in many facets of our lives. When she fostered several children as we grew up and went our own ways, Mom made sure her foster children got the same number and cost of presents for Jimmy and the boys who were fostered because they were nearly the same age as Jimmy and Tracy, the youngest. Mom broke her own rules when it came to graduation gifts -- sort of. She gave me her high school graduation ring when I graduated high school and bought Carol, Jimmy, and Tracy diamond rings when they graduated. She explained that she attached a lot of sentiment to her graduation ring and only had the one to give me, her first born, and substituted diamonds for the other three because they only cost money and there was no sentimental attachment to diamond rings (hah! which is why she bought so many diamonds for herself over the years). I also didn't get a car when I graduated because I had already bought my own car my junior year in high school, a car I shared with my sister even though my previous car was used for a down payment my sister never had to match with money from her own earnings. I also had to give the car to my sister when I married and graduated high school because my sister would have to drive herself to school and use it to get to her job. My new husband would have to provide me with a car or I'd have to use public transportation to get to work. My problems were for my husband to deal with.

The equality of outcome also included homework. Since I'd already had the classes that Jimmy and Carol were dealing with, I was ordered to do their homework so Jimmy and Carol would pass as well as I had. I refused. I would be glad to help them with their homework, but they would have to do the work for themselves. I was punished for refusing. After all, I couldn't take their exams for them and only they could earn their own grades with knowledge they had learned for themselves. Their grades were far below mine, but, like the parents who bought presents for my birthdays for their children, Mom couldn't force teachers to allow me to take their exams or give my siblings the grades Mom thought they should have to equal my own. The grades they got were their own just as Jimmy having to repeat a year when he was left back the year he flunked. Mom could only control so much and punish me when she lost control or the world and people refused to follow her rules. So much for equality when she couldn't control the outcome.

She could and did control equality of outcome when it came to discipline. Whatever my siblings did wrong, she punished me because I was the oldest and was responsible for what the siblings did -- or failed to do. When Jimmy and Carol were banned from the neighbors' yards, Mom refused to allow me to go into the neighbors' homes or play with their children. The neighbors' children finally allowed Carol and Jimmy to visit so that I would be allowed to visit. The neighbors knew the score and were willing to suffer the mayhem and damage my siblings would wreak so that I wouldn't be punished for their errors.

The neighbors took great pains to run interference whenever feasible, taking the blame or allowing my siblings to get off without punishment just so I wouldn't be punished when Mom spread the discipline around to include me, the oldest and the most responsible for not keeping the others from mischief and error.

I alone took the blame for my mistakes and the other three got no discipline or punishment when I was caught doing wrong -- or when Mom decided I was the one at fault even when I wasn't there. Knowing about a mistake was sufficient cause for the belt or the switch and for the grounding that followed.

When I showed my parents the many scholarships from colleges I received and the offers from three of the USA's military branches, I learned that not a penny would they spend to pay for college for me because Jimmy, six years behind me in school, had to come first because he would eventually get married and have a family to support. I could wait until I got married and go to college and let my husband support me. Jimmy was the most important because he was a male. I could expect nothing unless I earned it myself or married someone who could afford to pay for college. Equality of outcome ended where Jimmy was born as a male. Jimmy would never -- and did never -- go to college with his below C level grades. After Jimmy got out of the Navy, he managed to use his GI bill to pay for technical college to cover a degree on robotics and IT. I raised children and earned my way on my own. My husband couldn't afford college either and I was too old to use the scholarships I had been offered in high school.

The problem with equality of outcome was never just with my mom, but also with the idea that four siblings, one of which was adopted, would ever end up with the same quality of life and opportunity. It might have been better for me if my cousin, Jimmy, had been adopted before I was born, but his mother, my adopted father's other sister, reneged on her promise to give him up to Mom for adoption because she did not like and did not trust her brother's wife's snobby treatment of her or her brother. Since my birth mother was low on the family totem pole (a fact not discovered until I unearthed the fact that my birth mother was the result of an extra marital affair -- oops!), my fate was in someone else's hands and not hers, although she rectified that mistake when I was 16 and she became my confidante and champion. Mom's version of equality didn't sit well with her brother or her parents who treated me with love and care in spite of Mom's unequal treatment of me when compared to her birth children. My grandparents and my uncle did their best to stand up to Mom and treat me as though I were one of their own, a feeling not shared by their offspring who had their own views of equality and outcome that were not far different from Mom's.

When you pin your life and your views on equality of outcome, you should also be mindful of equity in that outcome. We are all born with our own gifts, drives, and abilities. We are not clones and not robots. Our experiences and what we bring to the global table are different, sometimes complementary, but always worthwhile when we pool our resources in a common outcome. Some will push us ahead faster and farther and some will be of no use -- often counterproductive. What we end up with will be determined by who helped and who were little more than hurdles to overcome or ignore.

My sisters and brother and I have arrived at different outcomes in this time and place. That is as it should be. Only when the bottom line is tallied will our input be measured and stored in the mind of the Cosmic Creator. We are the bits and bytes of data are part of the Universal All.

That is all. Disperse.

Blame the Mirror

Too often, people will point to an uncaring and unconcerned god as proof there is no god. That is only proof, as people see it, of a god that does not love and does not care for his children not of lack of proof of a god. What is really at issue is that the god they have been taught to believe in, the fire and brimstone-breathing god of vengeance, the loving god for whom all is forgiven, the god who demands obedience and submission, the god who is going to smite or reward followers as deemed fit by the gods' infallible and incontrovertible sense of right and wrong.  The god of such trivialities, preferences, and ego is a god made by men and worshiped by men without too much interference. We point to the old gods -- Zeus, Hera, Jupiter, Janus, Zoroaster, Ba'al, Odin, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, etc. -- as having been gone for a long time, far longer than modern man has known and of no consequence, except for those pagans who refuse to move with the times. We no longer believe in the old gods of civilizations long past but in the gods we were brought up to know: Jehovah, Yahweh, Jesus, and Allah. These are the gods that govern our thoughts and our actions and to whom we turn in times of need. Why do these gods not protect a young child from cancer when life is just beginning or give us, the faithful, a reason why such a young and innocent soul is taken? Why? Why? Why?

People are barking up the wrong tree, expecting answers from a god that is as false as the gods the ancient peoples believed in and sacrificed to. Their idols, or statues, still need to be mended, which the Jews and Mohammedans avoided by making their gods invisible with no need of mending, setting them in the imagination of the believers' minds and thus inviolate. The Jewish god will not allow his believers to submit their faith to Asherah poles and will have no god before him as stated in the First Commandment of the Ten Commandments. You can't state the rules clearer than that. The Jewish god, Jehovah, Yahweh, or the dozen or so other names he is called in the Torah, is a jealous god and will have no other gods before him. That is presupposing there are other gods out there vying for the same throne. You do not have jealousy when you are the only one and jealousy cannot exist in a vacuum. So, why was Jehovah a jealous god? Vacuum or contenders?

We as modern humans see the ancient gods of Rome, Greece, Egypt, South American tribes, and others as no longer part of the game, no longer relevant, so why do we continue to submit ourselves and our beliefs to the so-called modern gods of Jehovah, Yahweh, Jesus, and Allah. Sure, Jesus was the purported son of god, but was he merely a teacher who got caught up in the media hype and branded as God's Son? Did not Jesus say he came to fulfill the Law and offered a very different way, one which he taught as The Way, which was to be spread among the Gentiles who did not and had not been circumcised as a sacrifice to God? Is that not why the Jews do not see Jesus as the Messiah they had been waiting for, the one who had been prophesied? The Jews, devout as they may be in following the Law and living the kosher life (Hassids) are not the genetic children of Abraham, but a group of Eastern Europeans who have accepted the Jewish beliefs and follow the Jewish law, keeping the customs of the Jewish law, who are not the remnants of the 12 tribes of Israel. The remnants of the 12 tribes were lost hundreds of years ago and have not resurfaced as far as we know.

Jesus taught us the way of peace and loving your enemy as yourself, spreading his beliefs in the slaves and among the Gentile for which Saul, now named Paul, acted as teacher and for whom the Roman Catholic Church is built even though the Romans killed him and Peter, Jesus's chosen disciple who envisioned the spread of The Way to the Gentiles. The Pope is the heir of Peter, whom the Romans also crucified.

Gods appear and disappear unless someone rebrands them and gives them new life as the Roman Catholic Church did with the Gentile version of the Jewish faith spreading it throughout the conquered world by the Jesuits. The Romans couldn't eradicate the slave religion not even after Christians were murdered in the Coliseum by the Emperor Nero and his followers and the Emperor Constantine realized if he couldn't destroy it, the slave religion would be the new way to save the Roman Empire through the sign of the cross.

All worked well until Martin Luther rebelled against Rome and spoke of another way, a schism in the Roman ranks that was sparked by the availability of printed bibles that were affordable by the man in the street. Luther sparked a rebellion and others followed with their own take on the official Roman religion that was part of the Protestant rebellion that made the Holy Bible easier to understand and to spread throughout the Protestant ranks.

In the 6th century Mohammed decided to make his views of Allah the basis of his religion, giving voice to the forgotten son of Abraham, Ishmael, and giving the sons of Ishmael more power. Allah is all about submission. I believe that is what Islam means -- submission. The whole point is rewriting the focus of Abraham's relationship with God/Jehovah/Yahweh that makes Ishmael his heir and the sons of Isaac the pretenders to the throne that must be wiped out and destroyed utterly, so says the word of Mohammed writing for Allah.

It's all ego. From the gods to the prophets to the teachers to the faithful of all kinds. Everything is about ego -- how I and what I believe is powerful and how I must get everyone to submit to me and what I stand for.

What we as humans should be doing is following our ancient ancestors who out grew their gods and became autonomous, looking to the stars as destinations and not for the face of god. That is what artists, writers, and poets have done for centuries and what beauty they have left us with their talents. What ultimately matters is what is inside of us, what Jesus began to teach with his The Way that was all about love and peace and avoiding violence.

We have examples in modern day parlance on how to live a good life. We call it by including magic in the message, but it's not magic in the sense of witches and demons. Magic is what we have all around us every single day and fail to see. There is no need for lies or ego or power, except the power that resides in each of us. We do not need to pray to gods because they do not exist. We need to look inside ourselves, face the wo/man in the mirror and see what is there, and choose to deal with the outside world with peace and friendship and the tenets that Jesus taught in his sermon on the Mount where he fed thousands with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. He shared all among the gathered and taught the most important lesson of all -- peace and harmony.  Balance. We do not need Gods' or gods' permission. We do not need to submit to gods or Gods. We need to face ourselves and accept that we are all we need, that all the power was inside us all along. All we need to do is cast off our shackles and ignorance and embrace the true peace and enlightenment that is around us and within us.

We are all we need.

It will take time to get over the need for violence and force and it will take generations because violence and force have been such a part of our lives for so long. Peace is within our grasp as long as we stop praying and look inside, see ourselves as we really are, and manifest what is inside us all around us.

It has taken me a lifetime to realize what I knew as a small child. It takes me time and struggling against what I have learned to choose the peaceful path. It is there inside me. All I have to do is keep facing myself and choosing the right path, the right way, the peaceful choice. I will slip and stumble, but less so each day. Each right choice brings me closer to what I have spent my whole life believing in and manifesting in small ways. This time I choose truth and peace. Each time is easier. Peace is the only way.

That is all. Disperse.

V-Day is Coming

Most fairy tales begin with "once upon a time," but this is no fairy tale, unless you consider the idea behind it.

As a child I looked forward to Valentine's Day, not for the cards I would get but because I would be able to spend time picking out just the right card for the people in my class I liked. I had very few enemies, and they all disappeared on Valentine's Day when I spread out all the cards my parents and I bought and matched them up with the names on the class list. Each card had to say what I wanted to say to that person, even if it was only "happy Valentine's Day."

Married and dating, Valentine's days were different. I turned my attention to the person I was with at the time and made that person's day special. I hoped I would get something nice in return, but that seldom worked out past the first flush of infatuation or love. Men don't do Valentine's Day well or do it with a chip on their shoulders because they're not too comfortable with being thoughtful and loving, not unless thoughtful and loving comes with car parts and maintenance or mumbling, "Happy Valentine's Day."

I should say here that my taste in men is questionable. I've not been with a thoughtful man with a wide range of emotions, choosing instead men whose emotions were a limited multiple choice of no emotion to rage in about 20 seconds with an occasional deep well of happy that usually went along with seeing naked women in magazines or a cherry 1955 hard top convertible T-bird. But I digress.

For me, Valentine's Day is more about showing the people I care about how much I love and appreciate them. In fact, I had to take my valentines to the post office in a canvas bag to make sure I didn't forget or lose one along the way. Some of the valentines I sent were bulky and had charms and plastic/glass jewels and doodads on them. Each has a special meaning to me and, I hope, for the person who will receive it.

I do most holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries the same, taking time to make or buy something special for each person on my list, starting well ahead of the appointed day to make sure that I get everything done and get the right card, the best gift to send so it arrives on time.

Psych 101 students and probably a few psychiatrists and psychologists would say that my actions are those of someone who has been abused or tries to compensate for some inadequacy or lack in my life. It's no mystery. Not really. It's about showing people how special they are in your life. My fortunes determine the expense of the gift, but expense to me is just numbers. I buy or make what I can afford and never count the cost. The gift and the sentiment matter to me much more.

If Valentine's Day is all about someone showing how much you are loved, why not turn it around and make it about how much you love? Give your children a box of cards and a class list and help them choose which card to give to which kid in their classes -- even if the kid has been mean or arrogant or indifferent. Everyone appreciates a card and a smile, even if the smile is a tentative one.

No love in your life? Think of yourself. Go to your favorite restaurant, splash out a little, and treat yourself to chocolate. Chocolate makes everything better. Love yourself even though it seems no one loves you. Buy or make cards for your friends. Send them an e-card; those are usually free. Make a little gift or bread or cupcakes or whatever you do best and give them to friends and family or take them to a nursing home and share with those who are forgotten in the rush to buy chocolate and flowers and the usual Valentine's Day doodads and share Valentine's Day with them. Their smiles have a magic that will help you forget that your spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend or whoever forgot you -- or decided that an oil change or new power tool was the best way to celebrate this day of love.

Valentine's Day is not only about finding out how much someone loves you but how much you love.

I will not get any valentines from anyone. I've been single and unattached for a very long time. There are a lot of people I love and they will all find out how much when they go to the mailbox and get my sappy and silly cards. The same goes for my birthday, which is Sunday, February 17th. I will be momentarily sad, but it will pass. My granddaughter Sierra will be 3 on the 24th and I am putting together her birthday gift. I already bought the card and it has been signed and sealed and stamped and waits for the right time to send it so that it will arrive close to, if not on, her birthday.

Celebrate the love on Valentine's Day and include yourself if no one else remembers you. Somehow the smile and warmth will infect you and you will have a very happy Valentine's Day, too.